
Lucy Fitch Perkins 




Class 5"--^ 



Book 



T^^- 



Ciopyri^ht}!^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A BOOK OF JOYS 





By Mrs. Perkins. 


The Goose Girl. 


A Mother's 


Lap 


Book of Rhymes and Pict- | 


ures. 


With 40 full- 


page draw- 


ings. 


Small quarto, 


§1.25. 


A. 


C. McCuRci & Co 


, Publishers 




" I'll I. \\ MX i\\ I 111, I, "" 



|l'v..i: >1] 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

THE STORY OF 
A NEW ENGLAND SUMMER 



BY 

LUCY FITCH PERKINS 

AUTHOR OF "the GOOSE GIRL," 
EDITOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF " THE DANDELION CLASSICS," ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR 
BY THE AUTHOR 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG ."v CO. 

1007 



Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1907 

Published October 19, 1907 






LtSRAHY Bf C0NGRE:5S 
Iwu Cooies Received 

OCT 24 IPOI" 

CLASS fl- XXc, Wo. 
COPY B. 



Ct)( lahrsttit l^uti 

. R. DONNELLtY 4; SONS COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



V 



TO 

D. H. P. 

FOR WHOM THIS RECORD OK A HAPPV NEW 
ENGLAND SUMMER WAS WRIITEN 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 
I. 


]May in New England 


PAGE 
. 11 


II. 


A Solitary Sunday 


. 21 


III. 


An Indoor Day .... 


. 42 


IV. 


Society Notes .... 


. 57 


V. 


An Outdoor Day 


. 67 


VI. 


Nature Study and Profanity 


. 76 


VII. 


The Means of Grace . 


. 94 


VIII. 


Viewpoints ..... 


. 114 


IX. 


Intermezzo ..... 


. U7 


X. 


The Old Homestead . . . . 


. m 


XI. 


Work and Play . . . . . 


154 


XII. 


A Day in Arcady . . . . 


. 172 


XIII. 


A Meditation on Marriage 


. 189 


XIV. 


The Wedding . . , . 


. 206 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



I'AGE 

" The Widow Hill " Frontispiece 

" ' Skittering Along under the Fence, ' carrying a 

Pasteboard Box of Cookies" . ... 32 

" I ASKED HIM if HE CONSIDERED MiLKING ON SUNDAY 

A Work of Necessity or Mercy" . . .106 

"He DATED A Broken Spirit from that Hour" . 136 
" She said, 'What do you say to you and me gettin' 

MARRIED?'" 1^^ 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

CHAPTER I 

MAY IN NEW ENGLAND 

A ND to begin, such a morning as it is! As if it 
^/"\^ were the first that dawned — I had almost 
said bloomed — in Paradise ! And I, look- 
ing out upon it, feel like Eve returned to Eden, only 
with Adam left still without the gate to earn his bread 
— and mine — "by the sweat of his face." Could 
any one, I wonder, sit by this window, on this day of 
the world, and look out upon a New England orchard 
in bloom, with birds nesting and singing among 
the fragrant boughs, and not brim over with the joy 
of it ? 

I am not the first to observe that Nature is a delight 
at all seasons of the year; but just now and here she 
is a delirium, and I marvel that I do not spon- 
taneously gush poetry from the wells of feeling witliin 
me! If it is true, as the philosopher asserts, that 
speech is silver and silence golden, then I am sure of 
my verbal policy. I am a bimetallist, and believe in 
the free and unlimited coinage of silver in the ratio of 
sixteen to one, — that is, sixteen speeches to one silence, 



11 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

at least at such times as this, when the joy of living 
makes more silence than that quite impossible. 

I have been counting my Springs — not all of them 
— and it is quite ten years since I was in the country, 
especially this dear New England country, at this 
season of the year. To be sure, my Adam and I have 
had each Spring a few rapturous hours with the apple 
blossoms in our private Paradise of crab trees and 
hawthorns in the woods; but to live in an orchard 
during the bridal season of the year, — that comes but 
seldom in the life of a city woman, and alas! almost 
never to a city man. If only my Adam could per- 
suade that severe angel with the flaming sword, whose 
name is Necessity, to look the other way for a mo- 
ment while he crept past into Paradise with me, my 
cup of joy would be as full as the Psalmist's; and his 
ran over. 

To come directly from the noise and confusion of 
the city to this rural loveliness, is like going from 
a sick bed straight to heaven, only to a much nicer 
heaven than some saints have pictured; for I never 
could understand why the Christian heaven should be 
described as a city. My Little Maid once expressed 
her views and mine on this subject: "Heaven," 
she said with conviction, "is not in the city; it is in 
the country." 

12 



MAY IN NEW ENGLAND 

I suppose the idea of a celestial city may have been 
natural enough to a shepherd nation; or possibly to 
John on lonely Patmos the city presented a symbol 
of the companionship without which heaven cannot 
be; but what are pearly gates and golden streets com- 
pared with garden walks and the smell of apple 
orchards in bloom ? It is but a sort of artificial Alad- 
din's palace of a heaven to which some of us look 
forward. For my part, I prefer a heaven paved with 
such turf as I look out upon now — all spangled with 
buttercups and broidered with violets, with the shad- 
ows of apple boughs dancing over it, and living 
silence all about, the stillness of singing birds and 
humming bees. 

Bird songs and pleasant barnyard music mingle so 
sweetly in my happy ear, that this morning I could 
even find room in my heaven for less ethereal birds 
than those admitted in poetry to be fit for Paradise. 
So hospitable is my mental state indeed, that I think 
I should like a few barnyard fowls there, fowls that 
need never minister to carnal appetites nor be looked 
upon as subjects for culinary art, but peaceful biddies 
which might be allowed to wander unmolested, lead- 
ing their downy broods through bypaths of the Elysian 

fields. 

I think too, that I should miss the sleepy afternoon 

13 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

crowing of cocks in an ultra-refined heaven where 
only song birds were admitted! Perhaps I might 
advance into more exalted circles after a time, but I 
am sure I should like a good many of the dear com- 
monplaces of earth at first to make my progress more 
easy and gradual. Hens are not so obviously suited, 
perhaps, to the spiritual sphere as the lark which 
already at heaven's gate sings, but they have their 
own place in the invisible universe; and I believe 
with George Eliot that many a lesson of quiet con- 
tent in limiting circumstances may be learned from 
an old hen clucking to her brood or sunning herself 
in a dust pile, that we cannot get from more ambi- 
tious fowls. 

This plebeian taste in paradises may result from 
my ancestry having been uncompromisingly Amer- 
ican for many generations, or it may be natural to 
wish to include in the vision of the Ideal, the sweet 
features of the Actual. At any rate my conception of 
heaven is distinctly democratic, a place where all 
birds are born free and equal, and brought up with- 
out invidious social distinctions. We shall surely 
need some such world in which to perfect the demo- 
cratic ideals so sadly shattered in this. 

But this savors of politics, for which there is no 
room in any kind of a paradise, so I come back to my 

14 



MAY IN NEW ENGLAND 

window, from which 1 can look out over the pinky- 
white tops of the orchard trees to the hills beyond 
which border the river. They too are clad with 
blossoms and verdure in all the tender spring shades 
of celestial millinery, and when the sunshine sifts 
through it in the early morning, the whole land- 
scape melts into a golden mist that makes it seem 
like a tapestry woven of the stuff of dreams. I am, 
I fear, quite out of harmony with it all, clad in this 
too, too solid flesh — not to mention a woollen 
dress, — for it is still cool, and I long for a garment 
woven of spindrift, and a less carnivorous appetite, 
and specific levity instead of specific gravity, as the 
appropriate animating force for us all. To suit this 
environment one should be, indeed, but a very little 
lower than the angels. 

From the window I see my Little Maid placidly 
digging in a garden bed, while my cousin Henrietta, 
whose love for this old home makes one forget that 
there are such things as flats and rented houses in the 
world, instructs her in the alphabet of gardening. 

It seems impossible, as I look out upon this serene 
loveliness, to believe that such a place as the metro- 
polis exists, or that man could have used his heaven- 
born gift of ingenuity to invent such a chaos of life. 
I even found myself a moment ago checking the 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

thought of the city — any city — as if it were im- 
proper out of its context, — like profanity in church. 
Though I am a woman, I have enough of the doublet 
and hose in my disposition to concede that there are 
occasions when profanity is fitting and perhaps 
necessary. I am willing to admit that cities also have 
their uses. But in the country, in May, they seem 
to the normal life of man as an orphan asylum to a 
home, or as comic opera to real life. 

Among other pleasures and emancipations of this 
happy holiday, I rejoice to find that I am not in a 
mood to think seriously of Modern Problems, that 
unfailing diversion of the conscientious modern 
woman. One could scarcely, indeed, take them into a 
blossoming orchard! So I am thankful to forget 
them and to rest for a brief space from worrying 
about the world ; in fact, I have almost made up my 
mind to let the universe run itself this Summer, and 
to "let my own orbit be all my task." I think per- 
haps the reason we of the city feel so much respon- 
sibility about the world ordinarily, is because it is 
difl^cult to believe that God can be in the city at all. 
Yet I suppose His purposes are no more to be 
thwarted in city life than in the rest of the natural 
world: what is needed is the insight to see in ex- 
perience the unalterable beneficence that science 

16 



MAY IN NEW ENGLAND 

reveals in the order of nature. In a May orchard, at 
any rate, it is easy to believe "that we cannot escape 
from our good." 

This beautiful old home where my Little Maid 
and I are happy guests is locally known as Marston 
Hill. Its broad acres were yielded to the forbears 
of the present owners by the Indians, and have been 
handed down from father to son through all the 
generations since. Mr. Marston, the last of a vigor- 
ous line, was born here, and has never known any 
other home. Here he brought Cousin Henrietta as 
a bride, from a similar home in Massachusetts, and 
here they have lived through all the quiet years since 
that happy event. In England this would not be 
noteworthy, but the migratory instinct of Ameri- 
cans is too pronounced not to make it a distinctive 
circumstance. Whether the estate was originally 
acquired by criminal aggression or by benevolent 
assimilation, it is impossible now to state; but if the 
latter, it is certain that the Indians were completely 
assimilated long since, for the place bears unmis- 
takable marks of its two centuries of loving home 
life. 

The house itself is more than a hundred years old, 
and has sheltered so many generations of iNIarstons 
that family associations are grown like lichens all 

17 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

about. This succession of owners may be chrono- 
logically traced through the portraits upon the walls, 
and the furniture is an accumulation of choice old 
mahogany that radiates memories of all the former 
owners of the place. If one were gifted with the 
powers of a psychometrician, what histories these old 
sideboards and tall clocks, high-boys and spidery 
tables, might reveal! The house, sheltered behind 
elms and pines, stands back from the street in 
dignified seclusion, while its generous expanse of 
terraced lawn gives a soothing expression of comfort 
and accustomed leisure. 

Old-fashioned flowers crop out here and there in 
the turf about it, the survivors of a long-past garden 
where now the green lawn slopes down to the or- 
chard's edge. Great lilacs, almost as high as the 
apple trees themselves, mingle the winy scent of their 
white and purple flowers with the odor of the orchard 
blooms, and near by are titan bushes of the African 
rose, a flowering shrub that looks like a rocket, as it 
bursts and falls in a shower of gold. There are 
hundreds of these graceful sprays, and the flowers 
have a delicate old-time fragrance that makes one 
think of the dear old-fashioned ladies who wore 
mitts and carried sprigs of things to church, and who 

made this home what it is. 

18 



MAY IN NEW ENGLAND 

All the delights of Spring crowd themselves 
through my open window, and first of all pleasures is 
the open window itself; for what a sense of freedom 
conies to one who has been shut in behind storm sash 
all winter, when it is first possible to throw everything 
open and invite the outdoors in! And it comes in — 
the blessed air of heaven — without a cinder in it, 
blowing straight from Arcady into my room, laden 
with the fragrance of a blossoming world, and the 
songs of the feathered bridegrooms in the trees. It 
brings, too, softened by distance, the cries of men to 
their oxen as they plough in a neighboring field, the 
lowing of cattle, and the crowing of cocks. In the 
immediate foreground of sound is the clucking of 
Old Betty White, the setting hen, who is taking her 
morning exercise followed by an imaginary brood. 
Everything speaks of love and promise. 

" We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing." 

The cardinal virtues of faith and love are easy in a 
May orchard, and I find myself thinking more severely 
of Adam and Eve than I have done heretofore. 

There might have been ample excuse for the fall 
if our first parents had been thrust into a city environ- 
ment with all its complexities, but it should have been 

19 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

comparatively easy to stay good in a garden, where 
Nature seems seeking by every beautiful device to 
express the beneficence of the divine plan. Standing 
as we do between the infinitesimal and the infinite, 
with capacity to appreciate the perfection which ex- 
presses itself in both worlds, the understanding of 
it becomes a cumulative experience and the natural 
human being must be reverent. 

Yesterday I showed the Little Maid a wonderful 
new world which we entered by way of the micro- 
scope. A speck of vegetable mould was magnified 
to many times its size and revealed a field of delicate 
green upon which grew plant forms as complex, 
perfect, and beautiful as the trees and plants of 
our larger world. 

To-day I could understand the growing revela- 
tion which caused her to say solemnly, as she looked 
at the bees humming ecstatically above a blossom- 
ing apple tree, "I believe God has more power than 
I thought he had!" 

And as the speck of mould is to our world, so is 
our world to the universe. What words shall we 
have when that, too, is revealed! 



20 



CHAPTER II 

A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

IF ALL Sundays could be like this one I am sure 
I should like to go "where Sabbaths have no 
end," for a surfeit of such loveliness could not 
be imagined. I might find some difficulty in be- 
coming reconciled to the former proposition of that 
hymn, "Where congregations ne'er break up," 
however; for to go into a church filled with what 
Charles Dudley Warner called "old Gothic air," to 
hear about God, when every twig, branch, and visible 
object, sparkling in the sunshine and bathing in the 
breeze, speak of His love so unmistakably without, 
seems a sheer perversion to me, 

I had the firmness to adhere to this point of view 
at church time this morning, which was a test of con- 
viction, if not of piety, since the trend of public 
opinion is the other way here. But how could I miss 
two hours of such heavenly solitude as this, there 
being no human being anywhere about, except the 
dogs and myself, since the family drove away. My 
Little Maid begged to go to church "to hear the 
music," she said, but intuition tells me that her new 
pink-flowered gown added some persuasions of its 

21 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

own. At any rate, she went, and I am ^ow seated 
in state upon the veranda with my writii^ materials 
before me, and my Wordsworth to tak/ occa^mial 
refreshment from when I can no longer endure^-feing 
unable to write poetry myself. c^^jSP 

An orchestral concert is going on in the air about 
me, and as I sit here lost in a paradise of s^jwfe, I 
feel like Psyche in the Palace of Eros, the ^5^1 in 
the House of Love, served with every desirable^iing 
to the sound of invisible music. The bees rjawmur 
a soft accompaniment to the songs of robins, m^aHow- 
larks, bluebirds, orioles, and tanagers, each carolling 
his favorite melody in an independent obligato 
manner, destructive to one's ideas of musical form, 
possibly, but very satisfying to the ear. Even the 
occasional harmonic note of a mosquito does not 
disturb my serenity on this day "crammed with heav- 
en," and the crowing of the cock in the barnyard 
positively adds to the effect of the cluster of sweet 
sounds wrapped around with silence. 

Now the bells of the village church three miles 
away gently break the living stillness with their 
stately invitation. I like the bells the best of anything 
about a country church; their melody seems to 
belong with the gentle landscape and the peaceful 
day; but to be quite truthful, "I like a church, 1 

22 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

like a cowl," in perspective only on such a day as 
this. 

On dark winter days, when it requires rose-colored 
spectacles with telescopic lenses to see the beauty of 
life at all through the drifted miseries of the city, the 
church service reminds us of the welcome truth 
that after all we are but pilgrims and strangers here 
— that heaven is our home. But on such a day as 
this, intoxicated with the loveliness of life, I feel no 
more need of the consolations of theology and the 
doctrine of renunciation than a young-eyed cherubin 
does of a doctor, for to-day I can agree with Omar 
that '*I myself am heaven." It is well, no doubt, 
that some days should be so filled with the actual 
Presence that seeking becomes unnecessary, and we 
may *'sit at home with the Cause." One's impulses 
in the matter of church-going or home-staying are 
not, however, easily accounted for, and it is some- 
thing more than easy to convict oneself merely of a 
feeble appreciation of the means of grace. Possibly, 
however, the means of grace may track me to my 
joyous and pagan lair; for be it confessed, last week 
the minister called, bringing his Easter sermon in 
his pocket, which at Cousin Henrietta's request he 
read aloud with the silent illustration of a re-born 
Earth all about him. 

23 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

I like the old-fashioned relation of minister and 
people which is still possible in rural life. It makes 
the ministry more personal in character, more like 
spiritual healing — a veritable cure of souls. The 
minister here is an agreeable Englishman who must 
find much to remind him of home in the pictur- 
esque country life about him. He and his sweet- 
faced wife and five happy children live together 
in a dear old gabled parsonage across the street 
from the village church. 

This yellow parsonage in its setting of lilacs and 
elms is a real heart picture, and I tantalize myself 
by imagining the impossible in the form of the 
discovery of some such ideal spot near the me- 
tropolis, and our appropriating it at once and 
living there happily ever after. This makes me 
long for the faith that removes mountains. If I 
had it I should pray, not for a mountain, for whicli 
I have no immediate use, but for the removal to 
the city of a dear old empty house and several 
acres of abandoned land near here, which would 
exactly suit our practical and aesthetic require- 
ments. These old New England homes are so 
roomy and cosy, so homelike and domestic, that I 
do not see how the expression of them could be 
improved. 

24 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

In the West, alas, tradition does not hallow old 
houses as it does here. Though I am a loyal West- 
erner, candor compels me to admit that old houses 
there shock my a?sthetic sensibilities. They are 
too often high and narrow, with ugly humpy roofs 
and sides shingled in a manner to suggest eczema. 
Merely to look at one invites symptoms of acute 
nostalgia. There our oldest houses are apt to be 
but degenerate survivors of the Queen Anne period, 
mongrel descendants of a noble race. Their ori- 
ginal lack of dignity becomes with advancing years 
a hopeless combination of folly and decay — like 
an old woman with kittenish manners and a black 
false front. 

The Westerner who comes East is bound to grow 
idolatrous before these dignified remnants of ances- 
tral days, and with characteristic zeal returns home 
to call upon his architect for a reincarnation of some 
fine old elm-shaded New England home, which, 
stripped of its surroundings and imitated in a city 
street, is as forlorn a spectacle as that of a widowed 
grandmother living in a family of her Things-in- 
Law. 

My cousin Henrietta tells me about the people 
who live in the quaint old houses we pass in our 
drives, and her tales impress me anew with the 

25 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

thought that whether it be desirable or not, people 
have room for individuality in the country. Cities 
have a graded-school effect upon society, for people 
of the same class all know the same things, and 
make it a point of etiquette to act as much like one 
another as possible. In rural New England, at 
least, there still remains a commendable indepen- 
dence of character, and a notable pride in eccentrici- 
ties. This was plainly indicated by the complacent 
comment of a neighbor with whom we stopped to 
chat on our drive yesterday. 

"My sister and me," she explained, "ain't no 
more alike than if we was n't us! She 's just as dif- 
ferent as I be the other way." 

Just "to be different" seems to satisfy a New 
England appetite for distinction, and as an appetite 
it has certain advantages over that for conformity. 

Here peculiar people mature and go to seed and 
then, as Mrs. Stowe has said, "go on lasting"; for 
it is a place where people never die and are seldom 
born. The air seems an excellent preservative — 
possibly because there is so much salt in it, and 
every one has a reasonable chance of attaining the 
prestige of the oldest inhabitant. 

One of our nearest neighbors is the Widow Hill, 
a hearty old lady of ninety, who is interested in 

26 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

everything that goes on in her world, and who still 
walks about with all the energy and vigor of a 
young woman of seventy-five. We called upon her 
yesterday, and I shall never forget the charming 
picture she made as we passed between the borders 
of box to her Colonial front door, where she stood 
as in a frame, waiting to greet us. She wore a 
snowy cap, with strings of the finest muslin hanging 
over the little cape which covered her shoulders, 
and her white apron was as immaculate as her cap. 

She ushered us into a parlor with paper on the 
walls of a pattern half a century old, and seated 
herself in a high-backed chair which had belonged 
to one of the ancestors w'hose silhouettes hung in 
oval frames above her head, while Cousin Hen- 
rietta and I found seats on a horsehair-covered 
davenport opposite her. As she sat with her blue- 
veined hands crossed over the white handkerchief in 
her lap, she made a striking resemblance to 
Whistler's portrait of his mother. 

To see her, and to hear her quaint comments uj^on 
the events of her world, was like stepj)ing directly 
into a descriptive passage of a historical novel. I 
always skip them in books, but it was a pleasure 
to traverse the seventy-five years which stretched 
between the gate and her front door, and to live 

27 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

for a little while a contemporary of my own ances- 
tors. 

The widow lives with a female dragon known as 
Hannah Ann, who keeps her in perfect if uncom- 
fortable order, and guards the flickering flame of 
life with the faithful zeal of a vestal virgin. Hannah 
Ann is " a housekeeper by the wrath of God " — a Cal- 
vinist in kitchen management; and the widow evi- 
dently holds her in an esteem not unmixed with awe. 

The smell of soap pervaded the rooms, and the 
sound of a scrubbing brush was heard in the nether 
portion of the house, where, as the widow explained, 
"Hannah Ann was purifyin' her kitchen in prep- 
aration for the Sabbath." As she opened a door 
leading into the front hall to wash the threshold, the 
odor of baked beans and brown bread came in an 
appetizing gust from the kitchen. The widow 
sniffed it appreciatively. 

"Seems 's if we shouldn't hardly know 'twas 
Saturday without the smell of beans in the house," 
she said; "Hannah always has 'em for supper same 
as we always did when I was a girl at home." 

Who shall say we have no traditions in America ? 
Without his Saturday night beans no New Englander 
feels really prepared for his religious privileges 
on Sunday. 

28 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

From the windows of the Widow Hill's house I 
could see a charming cluster of buildings in the dis- 
tance, and when we stepped from her front gate into 
this century once more, I asked Cousin Henrietta if 
we might not drive that way home. The buildings 
proved to be an old mill, a printing office, and a 
country store, picturesquely grouped upon the bank 
of a mill-pond. 

The pretty mill-stream at this point spreads into 
a quiet pool, filled with reflections of the group of 
gray buildings on its banks, and then dashes im- 
patiently over the dam, and hurries on to join the 
river two miles away. The printing office was as 
neat as wax, and advertised its owner's New Eng- 
land conscience to such a degree that at a glance I 
guessed him to be a descendant of Jonathan Ed- 
wards, at least. The press, the mill, and an ad- 
joining store are all owned and operated by different 
members of one family, living in a comfortable 
white house near by. The father of this industrious 
family, whom we found sitting in a depressed atti- 
tude beside the door, is described by Cousin Henrietta 
as a professional invalid and hypochondriac. Some- 
times he goes from house to mill backwards and on 
crutches; at other times in a normal manner, look- 
ing forward and not back; while at other times he 

29 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

refuses to speak for days together. One son has 
dyspepsia and symptoms of melancholia, and the 
other members of the family display varying de- 
grees of deflection from the paths of health in the 
midst of an extravagantly healthful environment. 

Here is a situation to puzzle an evolutionist; 
and the explanation offered by Cousin Henrietta is a 
devoted, hard-working, self-sacrificing New Eng- 
land mother, who cooks griddle-cakes for the 
family breakfast every single day in the year, unless, 
possibly, she makes an exception of Fast Day, and 
it would certainly seem that that day might well be 
spent in fasting and prayer for the gastronomic 
sins of the rest of the year. I could but admire the 
heroic remnants left in the composition of this family 
which enable them to carry on three industries in 
spite of such diet. 

In a picturesque old house farther down the hill 
two women live who might have stepped bodily from 
the pages of one of Mrs. Freeman's stories of New 
England life. They are not to be classed among 
the "lovely baubles" of their sex, but are of that 
more austere feminine type described by Henry 
James as "spinsters by every implication of their 
being." Untoward circumstances make it neces- 
sary for them to eke out a scanty income by baking 

30 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

cakes and cookies to sell, and this occupation so 
olTends these old aristocrats that they try to keep it a 
profound secret from their little world. If in the 
early morning one should pass their tiny gambrel- 
roofed cottage, half buried among riotous peren- 
nials, one may catch a glimpse of them furtively 
digging in their bit of garden, or "skittering along 
under the fence" carrying a pasteboard box of 
cookies to the village. The townspeople tacitly 
accept their view and maintain a polite and official 
ignorance of this pursuit. 

There was a time in New England when such 
skill in cookery would have been a point of honest 
pride, but in spite of sturdy traditions it would seem 
that the attitude toward work in New England is 
not quite what it was in the days of the fathers. 
New England's worship of the head has lessened 
her appreciation of skill of hand, and has tended 
to develop class distinctions, and an undemocratic 
respect for the aristocracy as such. In fact, one of 
the proudest boasts of this dear old Eden is that it 
has a " leisure class." Distinctions of nationality are 
also more sharply felt here than we feel them in the 
West, and the preservation of democratic ideals is 
one of the great compensations in living nearer to 
the present location of the Star of Empire. Since I 

31 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

am in love with life, I am glad not to have missed 
knowing well that great City of the West where 
women have more opportunities, I believe, than in 
any other place in the world. 

It is wonderful to me to see the patient women who 
live lonely yet cheerful lives in these old-fashioned 
New England towns, shut in with few interests, 
limited means, and little companionship through the 
long winter months. To one surrounded with nor- 
mal family life their conditions appear intolerable; 
yet their interest in life seems unflagging, and they 
carry on their round of duties with as fatiguing a 
zeal as if the comfort of others depended upon their 
efforts. Moreover, they keep in their houses an 
expression of quiet comfort which renders them home- 
like in appearance, however lonely they may be in 

fact. 

Among the virtuous ornaments of their sex, there 
are no more uncompromising feminine types to be 
found in this region than Dr. Mary Brown and her 
sister, two women who perform the miracle of 
making money by farming, and are said to be com- 
pounded of the hardiest elements in human nature. 
Cousin Henrietta and I drove up the lonely road on 
which they live, in quest of ferns, and when we 
reached their rambling brown house, I begged her 



32 




<rf\K. 



ii 

m 



^ y.M 



I 



" ■ Sk ii"n;i{i \(; Ai.onc i \|)i;u riii': I'^knci:. " cxumiNc; \ 

PaS'I'KHO AKI) |{()\ ()!• ( 'ookl i;S " 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

to devise some errand thither, that 1 might see Dr. 
Mary and her sister in their chosen environment. 
In addition to their farming activities these thrifty 
sisters keep in one room of their house a stock of pro- 
visions to sell to neighboring farmers; so it was an 
easy matter to discover a sudden appetite for late 
apples, and I went to the door to ask for them. 
The gate opened upon a dooryard of clipped turf, 
which looked as if it were swept and garnished 
every morning. A few well-tended garden flowers 
bloomed near the door, which stood invitingly open, 
and through it I could not resist peeping as I let the 
knocker fall. 

It revealed a room, austerely clean, which was 
evidently kitchen and living-room in one. A shining 
stove stood in one corner against a fireplace which 
had long ago been bricked up to make way for its 
successor, the kitchen range. Old-fashioned chairs 
with straight backs and woven seats stood about, 
silently eloquent of respectable ancestry, and a 
worn and dull mahogany table which had escaped 
the rapacity of collectors was covered with books and 
farming journals. It stood so near the door that 
the titles were plainly visible, and among them I 
noted some old bound books on medicine, a 
pamphlet called "The Family Horse Doctor" lying 

33 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

in neighborly proximity to a copy of "Ben Hur," 
and a worn Bible; and since neither of the sisters 
appeared in answer to my knock, I allowed myself 
the indulgence of imagining them from the sugges- 
tions afforded by this table of books. My conclu- 
sion was, that the Bible and "Ben Hur" were ex- 
pressive of the tastes and inspirations of good Miss 
Esther, while the scientific journals gave hints as to 
the more severe pursuits of Dr. Mary. 

A table of books is a terrible telltale. One might 
go into any house and divine the character of the 
inmates by the volumes found there. Books there 
are sure to be of some kind in this book-worshipping 
country, either positively or negatively accusing the 
literary tendencies of the family. Even where they 
are not read, they have a function in establishing 
claims to literary respectability, and there are some 
books that no New England family could afford to 
be without, any more than they could face public 
opinion without the consciousness of a parlor. I 
was gratified to see that there was nothing to convict 
Miss Esther and Dr. Mary of literary hypocrisy. 
Their books were evidently read, and in the middle 
of the table a dish of apples suggested pleasant 
evenings spent in refreshing both the inner and outer 
woman. 

34 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

A curious turkey peered inquiringly around the 
corner, and as there was still no response to my 
knocking, I opened a little gate and went to the 
back of the house. The orchard sloped from the 
garden to cultivated fields beyond, and order and 
peace reigned here as elsewhere; but there was no 
one in sight, and I was obliged to return to the car- 
riage empty-handed. Fortune favored us on our 
way home, however, for we had not driven far when 
we met Dr. Mary returning from a journey to town. 

I had been told that in her young days — how 
long ago it were impious to inquire — Dr. Mary had 
left her farm home, bitten w^ith a fierce desire to 
experience city life and to study medicine, ^^^len 
she at last attained her degree she returned to Eden 
and for some reason buried herself and her profes- 
sional ambitions on the old farm. I tried to imagine 
the reason for this, for it would seem there must be 
a story back of it, but Dr. Mary herself as she ap- 
peared in her wagon, effectually nipped any romantic 
explanation. The instant I saw her I knew that 
nothing but conviction could ever have moved her 
to any course of action whatsoever. 

"When first she gleamed upon my sight" she sat 
bolt upright on the wagon seat, her lips compressed 
in a straight line, her nose tense, and her elbows 

35 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

set at an uncompromising angle as she kept a tight 
rein upon her spirited horse; for the one kixury and 
indulgence which Dr. Mary permits herself is a fast 
horse, in which she takes a stern sort of pride. This 
of course explained "The Family Horse Doctor" on 
her table. 

Her hair was short, and bristled in a fringe over 
her ears under the straight brim of a man's straw hat, 
which she wore pulled down over her forehead, and 
her tiny figure was encased in a man's coat of severe 
cut. So erect was she, and so cylindrical in shape, 
that she gave the impression of a highly explosive, 
but very small firecracker. So far as the world can 
discover, Dr. Mary has never practised her profession, 
but she clings to her title, perhaps feeling as Portia 
did about Bassanio — that since it was dearly bought 
she would hold it dear. 

I wish that I might have been present when 
Barney Bump, the loose-jointed town philosoplier of 
the Sam Lawson type, in an excess of liberality as- 
sured her that she was a "good fellow," and added, 
benevolently, "You know. Doctor, when I talk .to you 
I don't never realize that I'm speakin' to an inferior, 
tho' I suppose you be a woman after all." Whether 
orthodoxy or strong-mindedness prevailed in Dr. 
Mary's reply is not recorded. 

30 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

It cannot be truthfully claimed for the Doctor that 
she is calculated to win her way by the accepted 
method of feminine charm, but her uncompromising 
angularity presented some refreshing features to one 
weary of the exaggerated and offensive femininity — 
or feminanity — thrust upon us in the columns of 
the daily press, and even in more pretentious peri- 
odicals, published to appeal to a feminine con- 
stituency. 

The women's magazines are not wholly compli- 
mentary to the sex in the material which they offer as 
a response to the demands of feminine taste. I am 
sure I do not overstate facts when I say that we do 
not always wish to wade knee-deep in sentiment, 
much less in sentimentality, and that we sometimes 
crave other mental nourishment than beauty recipes, 
gossip about the personal life of famous people, 
illustrated articles on "Attractive Facial Expression," 
or heart-to-heart talks on "How to Win Husbands." 
To read an issue of the Woman's Supplement of 
almost any Sunday paper is a humbling exercise, 
and leaves one with chastened views as to the pro- 
gress of the Sex, and in a mood to embrace any 
symbol of protest against such a parade of physical 
attractiveness as the one and only appeal of woman- 
kind. Such papers certainly provide justification 

37 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and welcome for such a courageous and antipodal 
type as the little doctor. 

By the operation of the law of contrast we met 
on the way home one of the sisters who live in the 
gambrel-roofed cottage. She had met the same 
problem of poverty, loneliness, and repressed wishes, 
but in such a different way! Craven fear of public 
opinion, and the suffering which comes from inability 
to keep up appearances, were written in every line of 
face and figure. Angular and spare, she walked 
her solitary way, shrouded in a black dress of a 
fashion many years gone by, and with a bonnet 
which in this day of low crowns was a volcanic 
pyramid, from the apex of which an eruption 
of faded ribbon flowed like a molten stream 
down its sides and around her pointed chin, fram- 
ing a face so sad, so withered, so starved in 
affection that it has haunted me ever since. In 
the younger portions of the country we have this 
advantage: Our miseries are at least likely to be 
robust and positive affairs. Such a life of slow 
starvation of mind and affections is rarely found in 
growing communities. 

Poor Miss Maria is a sort of spiritual Robinson 
Crusoe without his power to wring victory from hard 
conditions. The memory of her is like the memory 

38 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

of pictures of the famine sufferers in India, only 
hers is famine of soul, and the suffering lasts longer. 
The sad element in these lovely old towns is un- 
doubtedly the dearth of young life in them, and the 
lonely conditions of old age. There are compara- 
tively few children to be seen in the picturesque 
streets, except those of foreign birth, and clean white 
cottages inhabited by solitary spinsters or lonely 
widowers, or even occasionally by a bachelor, are 
by no means uncommon. They suggest to an 
eager sentimentalist from the West a rearrangement 
which would set the solitary in families and ease the 
strain upon the sympathies. It is difficult indeed to 
account for such situations in a part of the country 
where there are so many " superfluous females," for 
if there is one masculine trait to be generally relied 
upon it is the habit of matrimony. Yet on this same 
lonely road we passed two pretty houses within half 
a mile of each other, one inhabited by a solitary 
spinster, and the other by an equally solitary widower 
of suitable age. The spinster is a thrifty soul 
whose cooking has an honorable reputation, and 
whose house is a model of neatness, from the two 
shells which embellish the stone doorstep in front to 
the tidy clothes-yard in the rear. She has what in 
New England parlance is known as "some prop- 

39 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

utty" too, and in summer her bit of garden blooms 
as luxuriantly as the pictures in the seed catalogues. 
She is sure to see you if you pass, and come sociably to 
the carriage with a bunch of flowers from her garden 
to tell you of the progress of her house-cleaning or 
preserves, or whatever annual activity may be in 
season. 

The widower's house beyond gave a delicate sug- 
gestion of congenial pursuits, for his porch was covered 
by a climbing rose, and flowers bloomed in awk- 
ward clumps about his lonely doorstep. In spite of 
these tributes to the Spirit of Home, his house had 
distinctly the forlorn atmosphere which is the usual 
accompaniment of a masculine menage and which 
makes unfailing appeal to the heart of womankind. 

With drives like these over charming country 
roads, and walks through flower-decked fields, " my 
days are passing swiftly by," and to-morrow it will 
have been a week since we came. I am already three 
pounds heavier than when I was last weighed, which 
was at the ferry in Brooklyn on a versatile penny-in- 
the-slot machine, which told my fortune and my 
weight and played a tune, all at the same time ! The 
fortune read, "You will soon get what you little 
expect." Probably it referred to these three pounds 
of flesh. 

40 



A SOLITARY SUNDAY 

Now for one more bit of Wordsworth before I hear 

the wheels of the carriage bringing the family home 

from church. Here it is: ^' Dajjodils" — apropos of 

the round bed of them under my bedroom window 

which looks like the halo of a pictured saint. How 

well I appreciate the joys he describes in these last 

six lines: 

"For oft when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood. 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the hliss of solitude; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills 
And dances with the daffodils." 

I can open not only my " inward eye" and see my 
jocund company of daffodils and the blooming 
orchard beyond, but I can hear with my inward ear 
the singing of birds and bees, and smell with my 
inward nose — for why should I neglect that meri- 
torious organ ? — all the tender fragrance of the 
Spring; and these joys I can summon at will. So 
great a gift is memory! 



41 



CHAPTER III 

AN INDOOR DAY 

THIS must be an indoor day, for the "rain is 
raining all around," it being Monday, and 
Nature having a touch of perversity in her, even 
in Arcady. However, I do not mind, for all days are 
alike to me in my present care-free state ; and Melissa, 
the rosy-cheeked maid who incarnates all one's 
ideals of pretty milkmaids, does n't seem to mind it 
either, being of that sanguine disposition which 
always trusts there '11 be more sunshine coming in 
which to dry her clothes. Besides, the rain has its 
own charms. 

I have just thrust my head as far as possible out 
of the window, to the immense damage of what in 
deference to the spirit of romance I call my rebel- 
lious curls, to take a prolonged sniff of the outdoor 
odors made more vivid by the rain. This reminds 
me of my long-standing grudge against the type of 
heroine in fiction whose rebellious curls remain 
bewitching under all circumstances, and who is 
always distracting en deshabille. The wind-blown 
and water-soaked maiden who appears most attrac- 
tive when the elements have done their worst by her 



J 



i 



AN INDOOR DAY 

does not exist outside of novels and magazine covers, 
and as a literary property she should })e boycotted 
by every conscientious woman over thirty years of 
age. The bad-tempered beauty whose sole claim to 
consideration is her good looks is a product of man- 
tailored books, and is an affront to the feminine 
virtues which the sex is constantly urged to exem- 
plify. What real woman has not acknowledged a 
debt of gratitude to Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, 
and other writers of their own sex, for giving the 
plain heroine her innings ? Jane Eyre owes her 
undisputed popularity to her resignation of all 
claims to beauty. As a pretty governess, what a 
minx she would have been! Even Charlotte Bronte 
paid tribute to the conventional theory of romance, 
by making Rochester a roue and striking him l)lind, 
so that no one could feel that plain little Jane had got 
any more than she could reasonably expect to buy 
with her looks and fortune. 

But I must not allow the consideration of curls 
to distract me from the testimonial I was about to 
pay to another feature! I was on the point of saying 
that I am certainly coming to a greater appreciation 
of my nose. In the city it seldom rises to the sphere 
where it administers aesthetic pleasure, being chiefly 
useful as a means of home sanitatioTi, and its value 

43 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

being fully understood only during colds. But here 
I discover it to be a battery of concealed associations, 
memories, and emotions; and I am constantly in- 
debted to it for rare moments in which I return to 
childish delights. 

I suppose there may be as agreeable odors else- 
where, from the standpoint of sensuous gratification 
alone, but an odor that is merely pleasing does not 
rank with the combination of sweet smells and 
delightful memories which I enjoy here. It is, of 
course, because the happiest part of my childhood 
was spent in New England ; and the smell of the sea, 
of flowering currants, of lilacs and apple blossoms, 
of moist earth, and even an occasional whiff of burn- 
ing leather, all have indescribable charms, because 
they were first impressed upon me at that happy 
period of my life. The smell of burning leather is 
associated with delightful walks to and from school 
along a roadway bordered with wild grapevines and 
still wilder rocks, with hills swimming in the blue 
distance and little brooks dancing over stones near by. 
The boot shops of New England used to burn their 
refuse leather; and this smell, not usually classed as 
a fragrance, became inalienably associated with 
care-free hours when we played house upon the 
shadowy rocks, with broken dishes for our only 

44 



AN INDOOR DAY 

furniture, and wild blackberries for our only pro- 
vender, and looked down an endless vista of delight- 
ful to-morrows. No wonder my inward nose takes 
pleasure in the odor of reminiscence. 

I have had lately a delightful ride with Cousin 
Henrietta's husband, and an equally delightful 
w'alk in the woods. The drive took us around by 
an out-of-the-way road, through the one long street 
of the village to the station which lies two miles 
beyond the town, directly at the mouth of the river. 
The river is a half-mile wide at this point, with a 
very swift current; and I thrilled with a pleasing 
horror to hear the story of a local Leander, who swam 
across it, not for to kiss his dear, alas, but because 
he had an ungodly thirst upon him, and this is a 
prohibition town. Under cover of the darkness 
of a summer night, he took a jug upon his shoulder 
and swam to the other shore, where he got the jug 
filled with whiskey; after this he nonchalantly swam 
back home, and later filled himself with the whiskey, 
no doubt to prevent taking cold. 

Near the station, hidden in a curve of the road, 
we found a picturesque cluster of fishermen's cot- 
tages, where men live who come to Eden for the 
summer fishing. There were picturesque groups 
of them sitting on the river-bank mending their 

45 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

seines, tying sinkers to their lines, and winding their 
nets upon huge reels. The fish are, of course, 
abundant and good, and I am developing quite an 
epicurean taste; for it is a point of honor to pay the 
respect of an appreciative appetite to the native 
products. 

The residents now pride themselves upon their 
river shad, though there was a time in the golden 
age of plenty when it was a disgrace to be seen carry- 
ing one of these fishes home. There are two respect- 
able families here of the same name who are nearly 
related, but between whom and their neighbors is 
fixed a social gulf as the result of the Watsons' ancient 
appetite for shad. They are still known respectively 
as the "Pun'kin Seed" Watsons and the "Shad" 
AVatsons, both families evidently having low tastes 
in fish. 

There seems to be a pronounced New Enghmd 
tendency to invent nicknames for local characters 
whose unique qualities rise to sufficient proportions 
to be noticeable. The village gossip, for example, is 
usually referred to as Queen Anne; and Barney, the 
Philosopher, received his alliterative title from the 
same public source. Bump is his last name, and 
Barney was so euphoniously desirable that it was 
contributed to him by the appreciative community. 

46 



AN INDOOR DAY 

He is pleased with this double system of nomen- 
clature, for, as he says, "It's all-fired convenient: 
f'r instance, when they was givin' out a silver tea- 
spoon (plated, I s'pose,) with every pound o' tea, 
and only one pound was allowed to each customer, 
't was as nateral as livin' to take one pound for 
Barney Bump and one for William Henry Bump, 
and did n't do nobody no harm neither." With 
which formidable array of double negatives he 
must certainly have proved the affirmative proposi- 
tion. 

A drive through the one long street of this town is 
a continuous delight at this season of the year. It 
is a picturesque avenue arched with magnificent 
elms, and on each side, hidden away among shrub- 
bery and vines are old Colonial houses which were 
once the homes of retired sea captains and other peo- 
ple of means. What a good word "means" is! 
It has lost its significance since wealth came to be 
considered end instead of means. The captains 
are dead and gone now, all of them, and so is their 
industry; for with the decay of the East Indian 
trade these old New England ports fell into disuse, 
and are now chiefly valued as sketching material 
by bands of artists, who come from New York and 
Boston in the summer to fill their portfolios with 

47 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

pictures of dismasted and dilapidated vessels moored 
to tumble-down wharves. Artists live like vultures 
upon the remains of defunct industries and departed 
grandeur! I confess to feeling the spell myself, 
though I admit that it is the charm of imagination 
quite as much as that of objective beauty that holds 
me. 

There is such a group of artists here, living in one 
of the most picturesque of the old Colonial mansions; 
and the spots commanding striking views are dotted 
with easels and men in Tam o' Shanter caps and 
golf stockings, doing landscapes. We surprised one 
of them painting by the roadside on our drive; a-id 
though he looked almost as respectable as an under- 
taker, being one of the least dishevelled and Bohe- 
mian of his kind, the astute horse we drove had his 
own views, and stood upon his hind legs, waving his 
front ones in the air, apparently in surprise at the 
picture. The painter took it good-humoredly, and 
rose to exhibit the fact that after all he was a man 
though an artist; the horse accepted his apology, and 
we moved on. 

The attitude of the natives toward these artists 
is one of amused and tolerant interest, and their 
pictures are valued according to the degree of 
exactness with which local views are portrayed. 

48 



AN INDOOR DAY 

A beautiful painting of the Widow Williams's pas- 
ture sold in New York for a thousand dollars, and 
when this fact was reported to the Widow she said, 
with contempt: "A thousand dollars for the like- 
ness of my pasture! My land! They could have 
had the hull field for less than that!" 

There was a time, it is true, when Deacon Wright 
put up a sign which read " No artists allowed in this 
pasture,'* but it was only after one of his cows had 
met an untimely death through eating the paint rags 
left in the wake of an enthusiastic painter, and does 
not argue that the Deacon had no soul for Art. 

Barney Bump, indeed, has become such a connois- 
seur that he is accustomed to offer benevolent advice 
and criticism to such artists as he finds painting by 
the roadside in his journeys about town. It must be 
acknowledged, however, that his suggestions are not 
always received in the right spirit. One of the paint- 
ers so far forgot himself as to say irritably to the 
philosopher, "If you know so much about how it ought 
to be done, why don't you paint pictures yourself.^" 

" Ain't got no paints," said Barney. 

To have the pursuit of beauty the business of life 
seems to the serious mind of the rural New Englander 
but a paltry way of spending the span of existence; 
but acquaintance with this group of genial painters 

49 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

is doing much to limber local prejudice and to give 
an insight into the meaning and compensations of 
the artist's life. 

The painters, as always, bring Bohemia with 
them and are happy in their own way in the midst 
of this charming environment. With characteristic 
generosity, they have left priceless souvenirs of their 
happy Summers in Eden upon the door panels of the 
old mansion which is their headquarters, and these 
paintings add new features of interest to an already 
historic house. 

All the dooryards in Old Eden are now fragrant 
with Persian lilacs and gay with bushes of bridal 
wreath, and the porches are draped with the most 
magnificent wistarias I ever saw outside of a Japa- 
nese photograph. My gardening microbe, which 
is a recent acquisition, grows apace in such a con- 
genial atmosphere, and I continue to dream dreams 
and see visions of a charming garden of our own in 
whicii all the work shall be as delightful as the nature 
books profess it to be. I even went out this morn- 
ing and picked lilies of the valley in the sun for half 
an hour, until my back ached and my knees wabbled, 
to see if it would n't scare away the vision, but I 
still have it. It will be thrust aside only by the 
advent of a new germ, which will surely be waiting 

50 



AN INDOOR DAY 

for me at my next stopping-place, for I am very 
susceptible to enthusiasms. 

This particular microbe has found a congenial 
culture in the fact that Cousin Plenrietta is making 
a new garden on the east side of the house, and she 
and I have been accustomed to sit in state upon 
camp stools on the lawn while Hiram makes a 
rustic gateway under her direction. The gate opens 
upon a broad grass walk, in the middle of which, 
where four paths meet, is to be a sundial, to mark 
the sunlit hours. This garden is to be that most 
sensible and consistent of combinations, a flower and 
kitchen garden. The vegetables are to be massed 
in beds, the military onions, the delicate parsley, 
the modest pea vines, and the stately corn, all ar- 
ranged according to their nature and necessities, 
and at the same time with due regard to aesthetic 
effect. Cousin Henrietta is a conservative, I find, 
for there are to be social distinctions even in this 
democratic area of a combination garden; the 
vegetables are to be humbly placed behind orna- 
mental borders of flowering plants. Wlien I make 
a garden I shall give the place of honor to working 
vegetables, as a matter of principle, for it is easier 
to reform a garden than social life — and I must 
provide some safe outlet for a protest against the 

51 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

precedence given to drones and butterflies in society 
everywhere. 

This new garden is to complete the Colonial pic- 
ture made by the old house in its setting of shrubs 
and vines. In one corner is a pergola covered with 
a grapevine and climbing roses. This and the 
rustic gate aroused a fine scorn in Barney Bump, 
who was helping to make them when he had the mis- 
fortune to break his leg. Why any one should desire 
an arbor with the bark left rough on the wood, when 
to "skin it proper" and have a nice smooth effect 
would be such a simple matter, he could not fathom. 
So he expostulated with Cousin Henrietta. 

"That 'ere arbor," he said, jerking his thumb 
in the direction of the pergola, "looks so wild you'd 
expect gorillars to come out on it any minute; and 
as for that 'ere rustic gate — the report 's goin' 
round that Mis' Marston 's goin' to raise turkeys, 
seein' as she 's gettin' a roost all ready for 'em." 

Therefore it is that in the family circle the per- 
gola has become the "gorillar arbor," and the rustic 
gate the " turkey roost." It must be said for Barney 
that he is one of those rare philosophers whose 
philosophy bears the test of events without cracking 
at the seams. 

After his accident, which occurred before I came, 

5-2 



AN INDOOR DAY 

Mr. Mars ton went to see him, and his comment on 
his misfortune was a triumph of stoicism. 

"Wall," he said, shifting his comforter into the 
other cheek, "I ain't no call to complain. We got 
to take things as they come along, but it does seem 
as though Providence had been hand in' out misfortins 
pretty plentiful to me, lately. I got my peas all 
planted along there by the buryin' ground last week, 
before I met up with this affliction, but Mis' Sander's 
hens come out and scratched up every danged 
one on em' the very next day. I went over to see 
her about it the last act I done, 'n as soon as she 
see me comin' she called out, 'I can't do nothin' 
about it, and you need n't ast me to. I won't shet up 
my hens, not for nobody.' Say, Mr. Mars ton, I 
wisht you'd ast ITiram what he '11 trade for that 
fightin' bantam of his'n. I'll bet he 'd keep Mis' 
Sander's hens in their own h'ants! He 's killed two 
of Hiram's for interferin' with him. I guess he 's 
the only proper anecdote for them p'isonous hens 
o' Mis' Sander's, and I can't do anything excc})' 
by proxy whilst I'm a-lyin' here; and it does seem 
as if it would kind of ease me to watch that there 
bantam teach them female hens their proper 
sphere." 

My walk in the woods was yesterday with Cousin 



53 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

Henrietta. We drove through the meadow to the 
woods, or rather, the others did. I preferred to 
walk through fields gay with buttercups, painter's 
brush, and red sorrel, and bordered with hedges of 
apple trees and dogwood still in bloom. In the 
woods the ground was blue with violets, and pink 
with wild geraniums — and such woods ! Rocks 
piled high up in the air, with great trees growing 
in the crevices and silhouetting their delicate foliage 
against the bluest of skies, and embroidered at 
intervals with bunches of laurel and sparkling dog- 
wood. We had to look almost vertically to see the 
sky in places, the great masses of rock so overhang 
the woods below. 

AMiile I skirmished about investigating the cavern 
and its environs. Cousin Henrietta was filling her 
basket with ferns, wake-robins, and other pretty 
things; and when this was done we climbed the 
rock, — butte it would be called in Arizona, — and at 
the top came upon a view of views! The rock is 
so high that it commands not merely many miles 
of surrounding country, but a beautiful sweej) 
where the river joins the sea, and of distant light- 
houses and "painted ships upon a painted ocean." 
The day was perfectly clear and warm, the sky 



54 



AN INDOOR DAY 

cloudless, and the air like the elixir of life. The 
top of the rock was embowered in laurel which will 
soon be in bloom, and I was surprised to find great 
festoons of what we are in the habit of calling Southern 
moss hanging from many of the shrubs and trees. 
I never before had a chance to examine any while 
growing, and it seems incredible that it can be an 
organism at all, for it has no roots, being an air plant, 
and hangs by the most slender filament imagin- 
able to the bark of the shrub. 

We sat on top of the rock for some time, expanding 
in the sunshine, and watched Mr. Marston and my 
Little Maid, whom we had left waiting for us at the 
bars in the sunny hollow, drive home through the 
meadows. ^Mien we reached the bars Mr. Marston 
was there once more, having taken the child home 
and returned for us. 

I saw a most lovely scarlet tanager and his mate in 
the woods, the first I had ever seen, and his wonder- 
fully brilliant plumage caused me to meditate again 
upon the partiality shown to the male of every species 
among the beasts and birds: they wear the plumage 
all the way up the scale. But women are avenging 
their sex in this generation, and the male of the 
human species even in the melancholy splendor of 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

evening dress makes a sad anticlimax to the gay 
procession behind him. Ah, here comes the sun 

again ! 

"There 's joy in the mountains; 
There 's Hfe in the fountains ; 
Small clouds are sailing, 
Blue sky prevailing; 
The rain is over and gone ! " 

And so I must be also, for the work I brought 
with me waits while I idle away my time on my 
Book of Joys. I must save time for going out of 
doors, now that the sun shines again. Melissa's 
optimism is justified — her clothes will dry to-day 
after all. 



56 



CHAPTER IV 

SOCIETY NOTES 

1HAVE chosen a romantic spot for ray writing 
this afternoon. I am sitting on the pump 
platform on the west side of the barn, sunning 
myself to get warm, like a good fat hen. I catch 
the fragrance of the wistarias here, however, and 
the roses near by show pink buds; so I know that 
summer is here, even though at the present moment 
I have on furs, and the weather continues to be sulky. 

I am reminded every day of Emerson's "Com- 
pensation," for this country life is an illustration, as 
everything is, of the truth of it. Of course, the 
one lack in real country life is all that belongs with 
constant association with one's own kind, and for 
my part I am ready to confess that I consider this a 
genuine drawback. I have none of the tendencies 
of a recluse, and find my fellow beings excellent 
company. There are delightful people here, but 
the benefit from them is occasional, and one has 
to jog oneself instead of depending upon outside 
associations for intellectual stimulus. 

On the other hand, this social lack is atoned for 
by a more intimate acquaintance with cats and dogs 

57 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and other live stock; and if one agreed with the 
misanthropist who said that the more he saw of 
men the better he liked dogs, it might be considered 
a fair exchange. At any rate, I never appreciated 
the individuality of animals so much before; for 
here every creature has a local habitation and a 
name, just as much as if he lived on Fifth Avenue 
with a number on his door, and his doings are dis- 
cussed at the table instead of gossip or problems. 
There are now four cats and two kittens on the 
premises. The two house cats, Mary and Martha, 
are sisters, and have many characteristics of their 
scriptural namesakes. Martha is the proud parent 
of one striped kitten with an Irish cast of counte- 
nance. There were more in the family originally, 
but there has been a shocking mortality in cats here 
this Spring, and still the birth rate shows no alarming 
symptoms of race suicide. 

Mary is an artless puss, affectionate and confiding 
to a degree that touches the emotions. We had 
all been affected by her unselfish devotion to Mar- 
tha's kitten, which she seemed to love as tenderly as 
if it were her own. She seemed, in fact, a sort of 
cat philanthropist, for she would spend hours cud- 
dling it while that more austere female went hunting 
or indulged herself in pleasant excursions after bugs 

58 



SOCIETY NOTES 

in the early twilight. We all felt that Mary had 
chosen the better part of maternal solicitude, while 
we were equally sure that Martha was unduly 
cumbered about other things and showed an in- 
stinct for a career. What was our surprise, then, 
yesterday, when our artless Mary appeared at the 
kitchen door with two kittens of her own which 
were evidently two weeks old, and which she had 
kept carefully secreted while she was deceiving the 
public by acting as trained nurse in Martha's men- 
age. She should have disclosed her secret earlier, 
for one kitten was dead when she brought it in, 
having met an untimely end from being bitten through 
the neck by the paternal cat. This, I understand, 
is a habit with them. Here one seems to discern 
a break in the operation of the evolutionary process 
that makes parents carefully guard the promise of 
future generations, and one feels inclined to commend 
to all cat mothers the excellent example of the 
bees, who once a year put to death all superfluous 
males. 

Mary shows a more than Christian resignation 
to her loss, which may possibly be accounted for by 
a lack of mathematical powers; in which case I 
am qualified to understand her position and to 
sympathize. 

69 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

The two families are now reposing in the basket 
in the kitchen, an example of the communal state, 
for both cats show that exalted socialism which 
recognizes all children as of equal value, and scorns 
the weakness of excessive regard for one's own. I 
have warned Cousin Henrietta that if she acquires 
any more cats I shall rename this place the Chateau. 

We are now discussing a name for Mary's black 
kitten; I suggested that it might be called "Loathed 
Melancholy," because it is so very black that it looks 
as if it might have been "of Erebus and darkest 
midnight born"; but I think Cousin Henrietta has 
no more principle than to call him plain "Nigger." 
Who would have believed this of a Northern woman 
of abolitionist ancestry? W^e are now wondering 
if Martha was looking after Mary's children when 
we thought she was simply enjoying herself hunting. 
Such misjudgment seems quite possible when we 
have been so misled by Mary's candid ways. 

This morning was a real champagne morning, 
clear, sparkling, and exhilarating. Perhaps, out of 
deference to my abstemious principles I ought to 
say a ginger ale or root beer morning. It was so 
fine that I went out on the veranda before breakfast 
and tliere met my old friend Fritz, the superannuated 
dog which has retired on a pension, the regular 

60 



SOCIETY NOTES 

duties of country dog devolving upon his understudy, 
Dixie, a cocker spaniel whom my Little Maid de- 
scribes as "full of blood," which is her version of 
"full-blooded." 

Fritz was my playmate when I visited here in the 
golden age, and he is now as deaf as an adder and 
stiff with rheumatism, while I feel as young as ever 
I did. It seemed quite heartless for me to be so 
well preserved, while he had reached the seventh 
age of dog, and I tried to recall to his mind one 
glorious day in our youth when he and I ran races 
on the veranda and vaulted the railing together. 
To be sure, afterwards I learned that a college pro- 
fessor, a relative of the family, was in the parlor 
at the time and must have commanded an excellent 
view of the performance; but even that chastening 
sequel could not altogether deter me from wanting 
to do it again; so, after examining the parlor to make 
sure there were no professors lurking there, I sought 
a secluded corner and tried. And I could! Fritz, 
however, remained in the parquet, as became his 
age, and merely led the applause. 

One of the roosters has lost his voice. Popu- 
larity has ruined him. He had what a woman 
whom I knew in childhood used to call "a drotful 
pretty crow," but I think he nuist have strained it 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

by excessive use, and now he is obliged to listen to 
the insulting remarks of his rival without power 
to retort. My sympathies go out to him, for who 
does not know how maddening this is ? I have 
been out to see how he bears it, and it is pathetic to 
see his neck feathers rise and the expression of 
inarticulate rage gather in his red-rimmed eyes 
when the other cock stands on the fence and shows 
off. 

Chanticleer Number Two has not the principles of 
true sportsmanship, and shows a cowardly disposi- 
tion to make the most of his rival's disabilities. He 
lowers his head and runs at him sidewise in a threat- 
ening manner, with wing feathers sweeping the 
ground, whenever his unfortunate enemy ventures to 
appear; and the erstwhile "cock o' the walk" turns 
and flees most dispiritedly. This little comedy is 
enacted over and over again, to the entire indiffer- 
ence of the hens and the increasing satisfaction of 
the victor, who struts about in a pompous manner, 
occasionally pulling up a crow — with tremendous 
effect — from the remotest recesses of his being. 

Barnyard fowls have always been a delight to me. 
Nothing rests me more than to lie in a hammock 
and watch hens stroll about on the grass in their 
aimless and inconsequential manner, occasionally 

62 



SOCIETY NOTES 

raising one foot in the air in an attitude of sur- 
prise and addressing a few maundering remarks to 
no one in particular, apropos of nothing at all. 
A hen seems always mentally abstracted. Occa- 
sionally she has the air of being on the verge of an 
idea, but she never really gets there except when 
she wants to sit. When she has once made up her 
mind on this point, however, she is adamant. Per- 
suasion and force leave her alike unmoved; she 
bears persecution with the unshaken faith of an 
early Christian martyr, and in the end she invariably 
wins her point. All minor issues a hen is willing 
to waive. There are only three things that she 
insists upon, — the privilege of running squawking 
across the road under a horse's feet, of sitting when 
she will, and of striking on her job when eggs are 
high. 

Cocks are more brilliant mentally and more 
aggressive in disposition, but they are not useful 
members of society after all. They supply the 
fascinating military element in their own circles, 
and are excellent fried in ours; and when that is 
acknowledged, there is little more to be said of them. 

Not so with ducks. Among the barnyard inhabi- 
tants I am surprised to find the high position in 
point of moral influence which they hold. They 

G3 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

lay few eggs, have no social graces, and are extremely 
exclusive with little or no reason for it, as is usually 
the case with exclusiveness wherever found. I 
should have considered them the useless leisure class 
of the barnyard, had we not observed their ethical 
value in the community. 

We were all sitting on the back terrace a few days 
ago, watching the aimless wanderings of the liber- 
ated fowls, when two cockerels with budding tail 
feathers began to settle a difference within a few 
feet of where we sat. They had finished several 
rounds and were still eying each other savagely, 
with their ridiculous little pin feathers bristling, 
when two ducks waddled up. They approached 
together at right angles to the combatants and 
firmly separated them, one pecking at one, the other 
at the other. They then walked majestically be- 
tween them; but the roosters closed in after them 
and renewed their quarrel. Thereupon the ducks 
turned, gently quacking, and walked between them 
again, each administering an admonitory peck in 
passing, which effectively stopped the quarrel. In 
subhuman spheres also it seems, those who do 
little themselves have ample leisure to correct their 
neigh])ors. 

We have made a discovery. Melissa's name is 

G4 



I 



SOCIETY NOTES 

Melissa Jane, which my Little Maid considers a 
remarkable coincidence, particularly when com- 
bined with her distracting prettiness, and the fact 
that she has a lover. Both these things were true 
of a Jane ^Melissa who was the heroine of a song 
which was one of my early delights and which now 
is equally pleasing to the poetic fancy of my child. 

The Little Maid loves her, and so also does Henry, 
the grocer. He comes to see her, on an average, 
eight evenings a week. When there is moonlight 
they wander about out of doors or sit on the vine- 
clad porch, but when it is cold they occupy the old- 
fashioned kitchen. At such times the family is 
constrained to respect the conditions and to show 
a decent moderation in errands thither. But alas! 
the short cut to our chamber is through this friendly 
room, and I involved myself in an embarrassing 
situation a few evenings since, not having been in- 
formed in regard to the system. 

Everything in this house, even to the love affairs 
of the maids, is thoroughly systematized and fur- 
nished with every modern convenience. Mr. Mars- 
ton had tried to save me from social disaster by 
suggesting that I go up the other way, but I failed 
to grasp his meaning and said with cheerful alac- 
rity, "Oh, no, I'd just as soon go up this way." 

65 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

I thereupon opened the kitchen door and burst in 
upon love's young dream in a most sudden and dis- 
concerting manner. There was a dissolving view of 
a tender scene, which I saw as one sees the land- 
scape from the windows of a lightning express, while 
I fled through the room and precipitated myself 
violently up the stairs, entirely forgetting in my 
mad haste my usual preliminaries of a glass of 
water and a lamp. 

The next night I had learned wisdom by experience, 
which is after all what life is for; but I had my 
regular nocturnal thirst, which, owing to a narrow 
temperance training could be assuaged only with 
cold water, and water could be obtained only in the 
kitchen. Mr. Marston bravely cast himself into 
the breach. Taking the lamp which I had been 
thoughtful enough to secure before dark, he walked 
boldly and as noisily as possible to the kitchen door, 
giving a warning rattle to the latch before lifting it. 
This wise precaution had the effect of ringing the 
stage bell, and when the curtain went up the tableau 
was entirely safe and presentable. ^Mien he re- 
turned with the drink-offering I felt that had my 
piety been equal to David's I should certainly have 
poured out as a libation water obtained at such a 
social hazard. 

66 



i 



CHAPTER V 

AN OUTDOOR DAY 

JUNE, dear June! now God be praised for 
June." ^\^lat should we do at this time of 
year without that immortal line to fall back 
upon ? I am sitting this lovely morning upon a 
rustic seat in a wistaria bower with the intention of 
indulging myself in a whole day out of doors. 

The Little Maid has just brought me red and 
white roses, using me on all occasions, in default of 
a vase, for the safe deposit of her plunder. More- 
over she considers me as "strictly speaking, a spec- 
tacular success" only when I have one kind of 
flower growing from my hair, a bed of another 
variety springing from my belt, and a third sprouting 
from my buttonholes, provided I have any; and, 
rather than hurt her feelings, I go about looking as 
mad as Ophelia, if not quite so picturesque. Just 
now she called me to the great pine that stands near 
the drive "to tell me a poem that she could n't say 
anywhere else," and, when we were both sheltered 
under the fragrant boughs she recited with shining 

face: 

"Come up here, O dusty feet! 
Here is fairy bread to eat; 
67 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

Here in my retiring room, 
Children, you may dine 
On the smell of broom 
And the shade of pine." 

There is wind enough this morning to blow the 
blackest spirits into good humor and cheerfulness. 
The air sparkles after the night's rain, the newly 
washed leaves twinkle in the sunlight as the wind 
shakes them, and the roses blooming on fifty bushes 
nod and bend in a perpetual dance, while neighbor- 
ing elms throw their branches about like Eastern 
dancers, who sway the body and make graceful 
motions of the arms without moving the feet. 

I have had two or three such noble joys lately, 
first among them the festival of roses here; and, 
second, the festival of laurel in the woods. Both 
are in full bloom now; and Cousin Henrietta took 
me yesterday for a most delightful drive through 
Blood Street, which is an "uncommon sanguinary" 
title for as harmless a road as ever I saw in my life, 
even though somewhat stony and wild for a well- 
tamed New England State. With their genius in 
naming their fellow-citizens, it seems as if the in- 
habitants might have found a more appropriate 
name for a wood road which yielded me memorable 
delight in its views, and a whole armful of pleasure 
in the laurel we brought home. 

G8 



AN OUTDOOR DAY 

The story of Apollo and Daphne took on new 
colors as I saw the laurel in its glory for the first time; 
and I did not wonder at the choice of that ardent 
wooer who said "If you will not be my bride, you 
shall at least be my tree," and thereafter wore her 
leaves upon his brow. Now I am afraid to spoil 
my image by looking in the classical dictionary, 
where I should perhaps find that there is no rela- 
tionship between that laurel and this. If they are 
not of the same family, so much the worse for the 
laurel of Greece, for it cannot be prettier or more 
maiden-sweet and expressive of Daphne than this. 
It looks indeed as if it might be the metamorphosis 
of a lovely young girl with its delicate pink blossoms 
and shy, retiring ways. They tell me here that it 
almost never bears transplanting, but left in its own 
solitudes it blooms lavishly and thrives under the 
hardiest conditions. The natives, with another 
example of infelicity in the way of names, call it 
"ivy" which is again corrupted into "ivory"; thus 
is language made. 

Halfway in our journey through Blood Street 
Cousin Henrietta stopped the horse and let me get 
out to explore a little lane leading over the rocky 
hill. I almost said, o'er the hill, the mere recol- 
lection of the place making one likely to fall at 

fi9 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

least as far into poetry as that, which could hardly 
be called more than a stumble. Such a bit of heaven 
it was that when, after a few moments of speechless 
delight, I heard Cousin Henrietta's voice calling, 
"Are you lost?" I called back with emotion, "Not 
lost, but gone before! " When I see such places on 
earth, I am perfectly willing to wait a while for 
heaven. The little lane was a bower banked on 
either side with great masses of the pink blossoms, 
and leading on from grace to glory, until it seemed 
as if the blue sky itself toward w^hich the rocky path 
aspired were the only proper destination to reach 
at the end of it. 

We came home with the carriage full of great 
boughs of pink bloom and another joy stored away 
for my inward eye. I have still the promise of one 
or two more laurel-crowned spots before the end of 
the week, when my Little Maid and I take our staff 
and scrip and start for Boston, there to meet her 
father, who will go with us to Grandfather's house 
and the real country once more, for a holiday to- 
gether in my childhood's home. 

My day out-of-doors to-day, happy with the world 

and my own thoughts, recalls one lovely afternoon 

of last week less wisely spent. I threw myself 

lown for just a moment's rest upon my bed and 

70 



I 

4 



AN OUTDOOR DAY 

opened Malory's "Morte d' Arthur" at that chapter 
of enchantment where true love is likened unto 
Summer. "The month of May was come, when 
every lusty heart beginneth to blossom and to 
bring forth fruit; for like as trees bring forth fruit 
and flourish in May, so likewise every lusty heart 
that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flour- 
isheth in lusty deeds." 

So enticed, the hours passed while I read on through 
the tale of that luckless time when Queen Guenever 
"rode on Maying into the woods and fields beside 
Westminster, with certain knights of the Round 
Table clad all in green," and what disaster there 
befell; and I ended as I always do, in spite of vir- 
tuous efforts to the contrary, in following Guen- 
ever's example and loving Launcelot better than 
Arthur. He wears better in the end, for I cannot 
reconcile myself to seeing that radiant youth, Arthur, 
grow up into the King who, after condemning his 
Queen to be burned, put his grief for the disasters 
which ensued into these words, "I am sorrier for 
my good Knights' loss than for the loss of my fair 
Queen; for queens I nnght have enow, but such a 
fellowship of good knights shall never be together 
in no company." 

This is too j)ractical a viewpoint to elicit the 

71 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

emotions of romantic womankind, be she never 
so stout and middle-aged. 

Joys, like everything else, have their seasons, and 
to read of Queen Guenever's Maying in January is 
to make the Spring blossom in midwinter; while to 
read of it in May, when the Spring's self calls to the 
same joys instead, is like eating preserves in a June 
strawberry bed. 

I made up for my loss of the golden afternoon 
hours out of doors by staying out in the evening 
to watch the dance of the fireflies. Lives there a 
man with soul so dead as to call these beautiful 
insects lightning bugs ? Every evening as soon 
as it is dark they appear above the grassy field, look- 
ing like little young stars escaped from the sky to play 
a while upon the meadows of earth. They made 
me think of Vedder's Dance of the Pleiades, only 
there were as many supernumerary pleiads as there are 
spinsters in Boston, which quite distracts the simile. 

Later, in the middle of the night, I got up and 

sat by my window to feel and see and hear its beauty. 

The dissipated fireflies were still dancing madly, 

attended by patient little glow-worm wallflowers, 

who could n't dance, but who sat in out-of-the-way 

places and beamed cheerfully upon the company, 

like governesses in English novels. 

n 



AN OUTDOOR DAY 

The birds were quiet except for an occasional 
sleepy chirp from a hidden nest, or a remonstrant 
cry, no doubt when some lively birdling refused to 
"spoon" comfortably, or took more than his share 
of their downy bed. The maudlin whip-poor-wills 
were at their usual din, of course, and one of their 
number with embarrassing gallantry sat upon the 
fence and serenaded his ladylove until the peep of 
day. Hitherto I have had respectful and even 
sentimental interest in his plaintive song, but famili- 
arity has bred its proverbial consequence. 

Any reasonable bird would swoon and fall from 
his perch after iterating and reiterating his song for 
so many hours without pausing for breath, l)ut the 
endurance of a whip-poor-will equals that of a polit- 
ical candidate before election. If it is for love, then 
I am sure that his lady hears him at last for his much 
speaking, hoping the old delusive hope that mar- 
riage will reform him, or at least keep him quiet. I 
am sure, too, that rival lovers in whip-poor-will 
circles do not fight it out in honest jungle fashion, 
but sit upon boughs and try to talk each other to 
death, the surviving suitor, of course, winning the 
lady. Moreover, I suspect the whip-poor-will of 
convivial habits. His is not the sober demeanor of 
the reputable citizen of feathered society, and there 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

is to my ear a blase "won't go home till morning" 
quality to his song, in spite of its minor cadences. 
There is only one creature in nature fitted to rival 
the endurance of the whip-poor-will, and that is the 
katydid. May they never enter into an argument to 
which I shall be called upon to listen ! 

Every other inhabitant of earth and air seemed 
charmed to silence by the spell of moonlight and 
the odor of blossoms heavy with the night's dews. 
The moon shone mildly through a mist, and I 
watched her serene progress through the sky with 
the perennial wonder of lovers in my heart, that 
two people may still keep tryst by looking at her 
radiance even though they be a thousand miles 
apart in space. 

Just then the Little Maid stirred in her sleep and, 
not finding me beside her, called "Mother!" As 
I answered from the window she crept out of bed 
and came to sit sociably in my lap to enjoy with me 
the fireflies, the whip-poor-wills, and the loveliness 
of night. Her fancies seemed to take a speculative 
rather than a sentimental turn, and looking up into 
the sky she said, " What holds the stars in their 
places.^" I told her a little about the force which 
we call gravitation and know no more about for 
naming; and she said, "But s'posin' it should let go, 

74 



AN OUTDOOR DAY 

and let us fall into the Universe, what then ? I know 
what I 'd do," she went on after a moment's thought, 
"I'd just catch hold of some star as we passed,— 
I 'd choose one about half way between the sun and 
moon so the climate would be something like this, 
— and I 'd stay there and make a paradise of my 
own! I'd find a cave, and begin as the Swiss 
Family Robinson did, and by and by when my para- 
dise was all done, I 'd drop off and come back home." 

"But," she mused, as difficulties presented them- 
selves to her imagination, "if you should drop 
into the Universe where would you go?" 

"^^^lat is the Universe?" I asked. 

" Why, it 's — all there is — sun — and moon — 
and stars, and worlds, and space — it's all there is! 
Why — I believe it 's God! And we 're all in God — 
and can't fall out if we try!" 

With this comfortable even if pantheistic con- 
clusion we again sought our pillows, leaving the other 
watchers to finish the night in their own fashion, 
while we slept in order to be ready for the finer 
music which ushers in the " rosy -fingered dawn." 

My last thought as I trailed off into dreamland 
was, No wonder the Shepherd King was also the 
Psalmist! f should think all shepherds and goose 
girls would speak in blank verse! 



CHAPTER VI 

NATURE STUDY AND PROFANITY 

IT IS one of my pleasures, as I sit at my window 
overlooking the orchard, to take a polite interest 
in the affairs of my feathered neighbors, and I 
am already slightly acquainted with two families 
of robins and with a catbird and his mate, which 
are nesting in the nearest trees. I am also inter- 
ested in the love affairs of a saucy little robin which 
could but recently have made her debut in bird 
society. 

She is evidently a belle, for she has been flirting 
outrageously for three days past to my certain 
knowledge with two ardent wooers, who follow her 
about from tree to tree and pour forth melting songs 
for the enchantment of her wicked little ear, while 
she sits — the picture of indifference — upon a twig, 
with her head cocked on one side, planning to lead 
them upon a new chase the moment she gets her 
wind again. 

Ah, naughty little coquette! I 've seen you before, 
in other than bird society, and have marvelled at 
the blind infatuation which you are always able to 
inspire in the opposite sex. Have you no Birds' 

76 



NATURE STUDY 

Home Journal, little bird, to teach you the kind 
of robin to be desired as a wife? She should be 
modest and quiet, the recipe says, with gentle, win- 
ning manners, sincere and considerate of her lord, 
sympathetic and subdued; she should set herself 
to him like perfect music unto noljle words. Are 
you anything like this, saucy bird? Not a ])it! 
You surprise and startle your wooers at every turn. 
You have an infinite variety of teasing devices which 
you delight in practising upon them; and as for 
treating them with deference and sympathy, why, 
you know very well you trample upon their feelings 
and make them ridiculous with every flirt of your 
saucy wings. 

You should certainly have no lovers at all, naughty 
bird, for you are not domestic, and show no fitness 
for family cares, and you are everything that the 
male sex says it considers undesirable in a wife. 
Why, then, are you so madly sought and so ardently 
wooed ? Ah, you know better what they want than 
they do themselves ? Observation has taught you 
more than the books ? Besides, you know when to 
quit? Tut, tut! 

I do not know what the little mother robin in the 
nest nearest my window may have been before her 
marriage, but now she is a model of doinestic virtue, 

77 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and the heart of her husband deHghteth in her. He 
affords a truly Tolstoian example of the original 
function of art as he swings upon a swaying 
branch near the nest, his song serving as a delight- 
ful solace to the labor of brooding, which she pa- 
tiently performs. His mellow, flute-like tones are 
echoed from time to time by the reedy notes of the 
catbird next door, which shows a commendable 
love for variety in his songs, and offers his mate not 
merely his own legitimate melody, but selections 
from the repertoire of other birds as well. 

This is a pleasant neighborhood. I 'm glad I 
moved in, and I 'm glad also that I do not know 
enough about birds as a class to spoil the charming 
surprises which my neighbors give me every day 
as I watch them from my window. If I knew 
always just what to expect of a robin or a catbird, 
the sense of discovery would be lost; and recognition 
is but a poor substitute for the more poignant ex- 
perience of original observation. 

To observe birds for the sake of being able to call 
their names like a lackey at a ball, as they appear, 
or for the sake of ulterior educational ends, is like 
reading a tale for the moral at the end of it instead 
of for the joy there is in the story itself. If I ever 
had such j)edantic ambitions I have reformed, for I 

78 



NATURE STUDY 

have not a bit of desire — any more — to say airily 
to an ignorant friend, "Ah, do you see that rare bird 
on the fence yonder? It is quite unusual to see one 
in tliis region at this season of the year; but I know 
him by the markings and by his note, which you 
will observe is" — etc., etc. 

I maintain that this sort of thing is unkind to one's 
ignorant friend, and I am in a position to know. 
I prefer a level of ignorance which saves me the 
necessity of using tact to conceal an embarrassing 
superiority, and which leaves me free to enjoy the 
carolling of a robin with as grateful and appreciative 
a heart as if he were the mavis, or Love's own bird, 
the nightingale. AVhen I hear a bird sing I do not 
care to start after him with a spy-glass, a camera, 
and a note book; I prefer to lie back in the grass or 
hammock and say thankfully to myself, "Another 
joy for the taking! " In fact, not to know the singer 
adds a positive zest to the entertainment. It is like 
hearing a great musician incognito, and judging the 
performance without waiting to see the critic's 
article in the morning paper. 

It was before she ate of the tree of knowledge that 
Eve enjoyed the garden, I remember, and I am 
resolved to avoid her mistake and not shut myself 
out of Paradise by an undue curiosity about things 

79 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

which do not concern me. I freely admit that there 
may be other points of view, and I would not be 
understood as making a gospel of my limitations. I 
simply accept them with resignation, and try to be 
happy, though ignorant. It is but just to record 
for my chastening, that I did not arrive at this 
abstemious point of view without effort. I adopted 
an infant crow once, temporarily, intending to use 
him as a sort of primer of bird lore. Instead, how- 
ever, he led me into sin, and my forswearing a too 
intimate knowledge of birds has in it a saving 
element of penance and piety. I found my char- 
acter unequal to the strain. It happened in this 
way. 

A nature-wise friend, with whom I was enjoying 
a woodland stroll one day, told me that she was 
going out of town for a short time, and offered me 
the use of her baby crow during her absence. I 
was delighted at this opportunity for nature study, 
as well as for entertaining the Little Maid and her 
cousins who were visiting her, and accepted the 
offer with enthusiasm. In due time the crow 
arrived, sitting in a malignant sort of calm upon a 
nest of twigs nicely made for him in a basket. He 
was very tidy and was covered with a white towel, 
which was like nothing in the world so much as the 

80 



NATURE STUDY 

mantle of charity in what it concealed, as I after- 
wards learned. 

My friend gave me some parting instructions in 
regard to him over the telephone. 

" He does n't require much care," she said. " Just 
feed him every hour and a half with such simple 
foods as he likes. I give him a hard-boiled egg or 
cooked meat (he prefers it rather rare) about twice 
a day, and at other times I give him bread and milk." 

" Does he use a bottle ? " I asked, beginning to 
feel that the feeding and education of this orphan 
was something more than 1 had bargained for, 
"and shall I sterilize the milk.^" 

*'How absurd," she laughed; "if he doesn't 
have an appetite for the bread and milk, give him 
angle worms, only be careful to crush both ends, as 
they might eat a hole through his crop otherwise. 
You know they are dangerous at both ends, and do 
great damage if swallowed whole." 

"How should I know that.^" I mentally solilo- 
quized, "I never knew any one w^ho swallowed any! 
Here 's a predicament for a woman who can't bait 
a hook!" But aloud I only thanked her politely, and 
asked if he said his prayers at night, and who their 
family physician was in case of illness. 

Just at this point, his cage — a piano box witli 

81 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

wire netting over the open front — arrived by ex- 
press, and I went out with the children to superin- 
tend his installation in the back garden, and to make 
my first original observations. The Orphan had 
no markings, I conscientiously noted, his plumage 
being mourning color throughout, as well it might be 
for his sins. Also it showed no dirt, and therefore 
suited his habits, as I was destined to discover. 
Moreover, his song was easily memorized, as it 
consisted of one indignant squawk, composed en- 
tirely of consonants, with which he expressed his 
feelings when he was hungry and did n't care who 
knew it. 

No description could do justice to his sinister ap- 
pearance as he sulked upon his perch, like Achilles in 
his tent, or rolled his wicked eye when he gave forth 
that authoritative sound, which meant dinner, and 
quickly too. Though it invariably was brought with 
all expedition, he sounded this peremptory note before 
each mouthful, closing his bill upon the morsel with a 
snap; then he waited for it to be digested before he 
deigned to take another. This process took so long 
that the intervals between feedings were necessarily 
short. Moreover, if I missed my aim by a hair's 
breadth he allowed the bread and milk or the crushed 
angle worms or the choice confection of bugs — 

8^2 



NATURE STUDY 

whatever it might be — to slip out of the corner 
of his bill and drop on the floor. Then he squawked 
derisively for more. 

The family fed him in relays. One fed while 
another dug worms and a third attended to the 
boiling of the eggs; and the evening and the morn- 
ing were the first day. This programme continued 
for two days, and on the third as an unpropitious 
fate sent rain, the Orphan, according to advice, 
was brought into the house and put into his nice 
nest of sticks. WTien in his cage he never stirred 
from his perch, but sat immovable with the sinister 
expression of a Japanese carving. In the house it 
was different. 

After a morning of feeding and anxious care 1 
indulged myself in such a brief walk as a trained 
nurse is permitted to take, and upon my return 
found the trail of the serpent in every room. News- 
papers, upon which he declined to walk, were 
spread in the library, and in the middle of the best 
rug stood his bowl of bread and milk, with various 
souvenirs of the same scattered about the floor. 
Twigs and leaves from his nest were strewn every- 
where, and following their trail I found the mis- 
creant himself in the music room sitting quiet 
in his nest, which was tastefully arranged upon the 

83 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

piano top like an article of vertu — which he was 
not, in any way you may spell it. 

I called the children and told them with some 
emphasis to take the Orphan upstairs and keep him 
there. So they bore him away, while I removed 
the wreckage, and made a few mental notes on 
nature study in the home. I was just beginning 
to forget my cares in a book, when a squawk and a 
shriek from above made me fly upstairs to find that 
the ingenious fowl had crowned a series of calami- 
ties by spilling his last meal all over my daughter's 
best dress. As she had already sacrificed two other 
frocks to this Moloch, this final blow was too much. 
I stripped off the dress and sent the Little Maid to 
bed while I went to the bath-room in a blind fury to 
clean it. Himself stepped in just as I slammed 
the door and locked it, and then — and not until 
then, and for once only — I said deliberately, as I 
threw the dress into the tub and turned on the 
water — but no ! — I cannot bring myself to set down 
in cold blood what escaped me in the heat of wrath! 
It is enough to say that it was brief, emphatic, 
graphic, and terse. After an astonished pause, my 
Adam's face became a pattern of sympathy and he 
said hypocritically, "That's right, my dear, let it 
out; it will ease you. I'm going to put the Orphan 

Si 



NATURE STUDY 

in the cellar." And he departed in great haste on 
this errand. 

The next day, knowing that my friend was at 
home again, I sent the crow back by express, and 
two days later felt sufficiently normal spiritually 
to talk to her over the telephone. "I suppose I 
shall add lying to sw^earing when it comes to a 
struggle between the truth and politeness," I thought 
miserably as I took down the receiver and called for 
her number. "I wonder which is the worse sin, 
unkindness, or prevarication," but before I could 
decide I heard her voice. 

"I called you to inquire about the crow," I began; 
*' he did n't seem quite we 11, and I was afraid some- 
thing might happen to him and that your study of 
him might be spoiled, so I thought I 'd better send 
him home before he got worse." 

"He hasn't seemed well since he came back, 
but I should have been quite willing to let you keep 
him longer," said the generous enthusiast. "I'm 
varying his diet a little now and he seems better. 
Did the children enjoy him ? " 

" Oh, very much," I said, "in fact we all miss him." 
No lie about that, I mentally remarked to my con- 
science; one misses an aching tooth when it's 
pulled. "Tie is certainly an interesting bird, even 

85 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

if he isn't really beautiful; we all learned a great 
deal from him for which we have you to thank," and 
I hastily hung up the receiver before I should be 
overtaken by further temptation. 

That night in the privacy of our room, I confided 
to Adam that henceforth I chose the safe path of 
ignorance, as that of knowledge presented too many 
temptations and risks. 

"Yes," said he, "I think you have chosen wisely. 
'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.' 
It 's evident your thoroughness is such that you 
can't be both at once." 

"I'm afraid that 's true," I admitted, remorsefully 
remembering the words that no perfect lady would 
have uttered, "but I've learned one scientific fact 
which sentiment had never before let me believe." 

"And that—.?" 

"That birds are closely related to reptiles," I 
said. I will make one exception to my notes about 
birds in heaven. I hope there '11 be no orphan 
crows there ; for if there are, it could never be looked 
forward to as a place of rest. 

Since this experience I have reflected a good deal 
on the profanity of the pious — not that I consider 
myself worthy to be classed among them. It af- 
fords a pleasing study, and is a personal comfort to 

86 



NATURE STUDY 

me in that it marks the triumph of nature over 
grace; for I find that vice is as social in its instincts 
as misery is reputed to be. 

A few days ago we attended a phay given by the 
boys of the Glen View School for the benefit of the 
town library here. The play delighted me because 
of the display of the inextinguishable Boy in various 
characters. It was, of course, a farce acted entirely 
by the lads, whose changing voices and manly 
strides made the female parts particularly effective 
and pleasing. The town turned out in its best 
clothes and encouraged the performers by liberal 
applause and an abundance of lemon squash and 
delicious homemade cake. I watched the emotions 
of this New England audience as displayed in their 
expressions while the performance went on; for the 
plot was somewhat French beneath all the nonsense, 
and the wicked word "devil" occurred several times 
in the part of an explosive Englishman, who was one 
of the chief characters of the play. As I glanced 
furtively at the minister from time to time to see how 
his mind was working, there were plain indications 
of a falling barometer. Afterwards he joined me on 
the veranda as I waited patiently about for Cousin 
Henrietta to appear, and asked how I had enjoyed 
the performance. 

87 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

"Oh, very much! I like Boy," I said, "and he 
is such a shy animal that one seldom has a chance 
to study him unawares. The play was like an 
argument. It did not shed any light upon the sub- 
ject discussed, but plenty of it upon the characters 
who took part in the discussion. But I thought 
that you hardly approved," I finished, hoping to draw 
his fire. 

"No, I must confess," he replied, "I do not like 
the use of profane words. I feel that it has a searing 
effect upon the Young Mind. It really is n't neces- 
sary." 

"Perhaps not," I admitted, "and of course you 
could n't be expected to approve exactly; but do 
you honestly think there is much harm in little ones ? 
Don't you think they may afford a safety valve for 
the Boy's love of shocking people, which is quite 
harmless after all ? It is bound to have some out- 
let! Isn't it like giving a boy torpedoes on the 
Fourth of July to divert his mind from toy pistols 
and cannon crackers ? " 

"No," he said solemnly, "I do not recognize it as 
a necessity. I am reminded of an old and very 
profane man who used to work for me. He swore 
so profusely, and it had become such a habit, that he 
did not himself know when he did it. I used often 

88 



NATURE STUDY 

to correct him for it, ami finally said to him, 'Now 
I '11 teach you something to say when you feel like 
that! It w^ill answer every purpose, and it is n't 
wrong. Just say "Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta."'" 

"But, my dear minister," I protested, with neural- 
gic twingings in the region of my conscience, "you 
surely did n't lead that old man to think that the evil 
lay in the selection of words ? Would n't the entire 
Greek alphabet be as wicked as anything else if used 
in the same way ? Just see how you bereft the poor 
creature of his accustomed tools, and tried to teach 
him the use of a new and less handy set for the same 
old purpose! I should be rather sorry for him if I 
did n't feel reasonably certain that he would return to 
his idols and swear on comfortably to the grave. 
Does not the Bible say that God looketh upon the 
heart and not upon the vocabulary.^" But it was 
evident that he regarded these arguments as specious 
and heretical; and I, myself, was not sure that they 
did not emanate from a seared conscience. What 
would he think of me if he knew! 

His orthodox point of view was called to mind 
early this morning by the consoling fall from grace 
of the hired man, who feeds certain select and aris- 
tocratic hens cloistered in separate coops in a secluded 
spot near my window. I know that he had recently 

8!) 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

experienced religion and had become a devout 
Baptist, for he borrowed a horse only a Sunday or 
two ago to convey himself to the scene of his own 
"baptizin'." 

Henry, the grocer, was engaged in the secular 
occupation of making up his accounts that Sunday; 
so Melissa could n't attend this function, much to 
her regret, for, as she said with some plaintiveness, 
"she 'd never been to but one baptizin' in all her 
life." " But then, when a man 's in business for 
himself, there 's excuses," she added, not wishing us 
to misjudge Henry, who is a Catholic. So by all 
these tokens I knew Hiram for a man of religious 
convictions. 

This morning as I lay listening to the chorus of 
birds, I heard his step on the drive, as he came to 
make his regular call upon this Hampton Court of 
hens, carrying with him a dish of grain for their 
breakfast. One hen had a wandering disposition 
and a chance to get out, judging by evidence 
of excitement on the part of the hen and a smothered 
exclamation from Hiram as he approached the 
coop. Then I heard his voice calling alluringly, 
" Chickie-chick, chick, chick," and the sound of 
grain falling upon the ground. I could image 
from my pillow his unsuccessful effort to prevent 

90 



NATURE STUDY 

the escape, for there came the sound of a squawk 
and a scramble as the hen flew the coop and cackled 
derisively from a distance. "Chickie, chick, chick! " 
called Hiram in tones of calculated seductiveness 
contending with suppressed wrath. "Chickie, chick, 
chick!" {sotto voce, "Go-ram you, you infernal old 
idiot! ") "Chickie, chick!" (louder) "Dum you to the 
devil,— thar!" 

An instant of stricken silence was followed by the 
sound of a stick hitting the branches of the apple 
tree, and evidently failing in its mission, for the de- 
risive squawk sounded from the remote regions of the 
barnyard, and I could see in mental vision the 
liberated fowl making the best of time in a hundred- 
yard dash for an inaccessible spot under the barn, 
with Hiram in a breathless fury sprinting after her. 
The staccato sound of his footsteps died away in a 
gradual diminuendo, and I was left once more to 
the enjoyment of the morning bird songs as I lay in 
an unhygienic attitude with my hands clasped under 
my head. 

The whole episode was quite Wagnerian in sug- 
gestion, and reminded me of the opera of "Siegfried." 
First came the rustling of leaves and the birds' songs 
blending with the morning breeze; then the confi- 
dent appearance of Hiram and his encounter with 

91 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

the Hen, followed by his defeat and hasty departure, 
leaving the stage once more to the rustling leaves, the 
bird songs, and the morning breeze. I even began 
a symbolic musical rendering of the drama, and had 
devised a most expressive treatment of the call of 
Hiram — "Chick, chick, chick," and an excellent 
rendering of the Hen motif as the two most impor- 
tant contrasting elements in the composition, when 
the breakfast bell rang. During a hasty toilet I 
comforted my conscience and absolved Hiram by 
recalling other examples of pious profanity, such as 
the case of the Quaker whose cow displayed all the 
exasperating tricks of which a cow is mistress, as he 
tried to milk her. At last he arose and, true to his 
non-resistant principles, explained the case to the cow. 
" I will not kick thee," he said sternly, " and I will not 
beat thee, but — (crescendo) I will twist thy tail! " 

It may be sinful, but I cannot help rejoicing that 
his ingenuity found a loophole for the escape of 
his natural feelings. Besides, I appreciate the temp- 
tation, having been well acquainted with quite a 
number of cows. 

After all, experience leads me to believe that there 
are advantages in taking a middle course between 
vice and virtue. There are still occasional moments 
when I long for the uncompromising and consistent 



NATURE STUDY 

virtue and villainy into which the world is divided 
by the very young. Evil deeds performed by the 
rigliteous, and kind actions by the unregenerate, are 
terribly disconcerting to one's ethical geography, and 
demand the recognition of a common ground ])e- 
tween saints and sinners. I remember attending a 
performance of the opera of "Asrael" in New 
York once, when the libretto announced that "the 
first scene was laid in Heaven, the second in Hell, 
and the rest in Flanders." This, to my mind, 
placed Flanders in a compromising position. 

Heaven was all in gold and white and pale blue, 
with a great stairway disappearing into clouds, 
and upon this stairway bored-looking angels ap- 
peared at intervals, holding golden trumpets in their 
listless hands. There seemed to be very little going 
on there, and very few people in residence. Hell, on 
the contrary, was a lively place, with the glow of hos- 
pitable fires shining on multitudes of busy little red 
devils. 

The friend who was with me expressed an unhesi- 
tating preference for this latter place; l)ut after 
seeing the whole play I decided upon Flanders as 
the appropriate field for my tempered and alloyed 
virtues, and my subsequent career has justified the 
symbolism of my choice. 

!)3 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MEANS OF GRACE 

MY DEAR cousin Henrietta is indeed, as 
Hiram admiringly asserts, "a great com- 
mander." She not only knows what you 
ought to do, which is often more than you know 
yourself, but she makes you want to do it, and in the 
end you find that her ways are ways of pleasantness 
and all her paths are peace. 

Now, I thought I did n't want to go to church this 
morning — not that I love church less, but this 
beautiful blossoming world more. When the sub- 
ject was first opened I offered a feeble resistance, 
but was driven from one argument to another until 
I was forced to take refuge in my last stronghold of 
objection, which was the condition of the Little 
Maid's Sunday hat. 

"Just look at it," I said, holding it up; "the scarf 
is all melted down by the sea air. It looks like a 
cold compress. I can't allow her to go to church 
looking like that!" 

" Melissa, put on a flat-iron!" was all she said, and 
I knew at once that my fate was sealed, and that 
while I continue under Cousin Henrietta's roof, 

!)4 



i 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

I shall have to retrim that wilted hat every Sunday 
morning before church. When a decision is really 
made it is my principle to carry it out with spirit, not 
allowing myself to go through any experience, as Mrs. 
Stowe has said, "like a little dog tied under a wagon, 
hanging back and yelping." 

So I pressed the scarf and put it on again, dressed 
myself and the Little Maid in our Sunday best, and 
meekly joined the family at the carriage step in 
time for the drive to church. 

It is true that virtue is its own reward, even an 
assisted, not to say compulsory, virtue like mine; 
for the drive was delightful and I enjoyed the Sab- 
bath feeling, which is in the New England air as 
it is nowhere else in all the world on Sunday morn- 
ing. The religious privileges of the servants are, 
like all their other needs, treated with consideration 
at Marston Hill. So Melissa, in a fresh muslin 
gown and pink ribbons, sat on the broad front seat 
with Mr. Marston, making a refreshing picture for 
the rest of us in the back of the carriage. The 
journey was delightfully punctuated all the way by 
Mr. Marston's kindly greeting to every one we passed, 
— for he is universally beloved in Old Eden, — and 
their friendly answers were equally cheering to hear. 

Hiram, as driver, was at a social disadvantage, 

95 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

for he was obliged to balance himself perilously on 
the little sliding shelf which projects from under the 
front seat of the carriage, and was so absorbed in 
maintaining his equilibrium that he was unable even 
to salute his sweetheart, whom we passed on the 
way. The resourceful and sympathetic Mr. Mars- 
ton rose to the emergency, as he saw the conscious 
color creep back of Hiram's ears and deepen his 
bronze complexion to a brick red. He is accustomed 
to assisting in unobtrusive ways in affairs of the 
heart, his own being always young. I was not 
wholly surprised, therefore, to see him lean forward, 
lift Hiram's hat from his head, and wave it ceremo- 
niously to the blushing girl, while he said sotto voce, 
*' You do the bowing, Hiram, and I '11 attend to 
your hat." 

With such a spirit of cooperation, no wonder that 
social affairs go smoothly at Marston Hill. In fact, 
it has become such a paradise for lovers that Cousin 
Henrietta complains that she cannot keep her maids, 
because they infallibly marry during their term of 
office. 

As we came into town we passed little groups of 
people, dressed in their Sunday best, walking se- 
dately over the green turf from neighboring houses 
toward the little church; and as we approached the 

96 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

chiircli itself we were obliged to wait our turn at 
the carriage step while from other carriages elderly 
ladies in creaking black silks descended laboriously 
to the ground, and with great solemnity passed up 
the gravel walk and under the classic portico. 

The church is a building of perfect Colonial type, 
very small, but quite large enough to hold the little 
congregation of old residents and summer visitors 
who find their way to the morning service. As 
for the sermon, it would have done credit to a much 
larger edifice and satisfied a more critical audience. 

Back of the church building and outside the con- 
secrated precincts of the churchyard is a flat stone 
upon which the great Whitfield once stood to preach 
in the open air, since he was forbidden the use of 
either sacred edifice or ground for the spreading of 
his heresy. Now the church receives its chief 
claim to public interest from this historical fact; 
but I shall resist the opportunity to moralize upon 
it. I should have regretted leaving all the external 
loveliness of the world to enter even a cathedral, 
I think, but was comforted to find that from the 
open windows there were refreshing glimpses of 
green branches swaying in the gentle breeze, while 
sweet odors of wistaria and apple blossoms floated 
in, providing a pure incense for the service. 

97 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

It was pleasant to sit in this place of peace and 
watch the people pass through the little pew-doors, 
close them, and bow their heads in a moment of silent 
reverence. It is good to stay away from church, 
and it is good also to go. Each method of worship 
fills a need in our complex make-up; and who shall 
doubt that God is everywhere, and therefore as ac- 
cessible in one place as in another to any true seeker ? 

The little congregation presented variety, even in 
its small number; for Old Eden has been discovered 
by the city, and has a colony of New Yorkers, many 
of whom knew the region in childhood and now 
return to it with increasing love to spend the leisure 
days of their prosperous age. 

Moreover the town boasts a school for girls, and 
therefore, inevitably, one for boys also; and the 
pupils of both are assisted in the formation of cor- 
rect habits by being ushered in a body to church 
on every Sunday morning. 

The Marston pew is favorably situated, as it com- 
mands an excellent view of both these charming 
groups, and my eyes were refreshed throughout the 
service by occasional glances at their young, happy 
faces. Their behavior was exemplary in the extreme 
— how could it be otherwise ? Possibly their virtue 
was of the same inevitable nature as my own, for 

98 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

their pews were very near the pulpit, and at the 
ends of each sat official chaperons who exercised 
omniscience — through the elbows, I judged, for 
their eyes never wandered from the minister's 
face during the entire service. 

In a spasm of emulation I, too, endeavored to fix 
the minister with that stony stare, which, in New Eng- 
land, is evidence of having been properly "raised." 
This effort carried me back on the wings of memory 
to the days of my childhood, when I sat in the old 
family pew, and in obedience to whispered admoni- 
tions, and encouragement from the elbow of my 
grandmother, fixed my eyes upon the minister so 
unwinkingly that I saw a halo of light play about 
the black figure in the pulpit. At that time I had 
never heard of the law of vision by which the eye, 
wearied with attention, supplies the color comple- 
mentary to the one looked upon, and in my innocence 
I imagined this to be such a glory as I had seen in 
pictures surrounding the saints, and ascribed it to 
the extraordinary virtue of the man of God. 

On Sunday mornings in the dear pious days of 
my childhood, our family always assembled in state 
at the south door of the old homestead, with the 
impressiveness of a caravan about to start across 
the desert, and was there stowed away in the two or 

99 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

three cavernous carry-alls waiting for us under the 
old elm trees that arched the drive. A numerous 
family it was, with grandfather and grandmother, 
father, mother, and uncles enough to insure the 
good behavior of more restless children than my 
sisters and myself, even through the longest engage- 
ment possible to orthodox theology. When we had 
been packed with the greatest economy of space into 
these carry-alls, they were driven at a sedate pace over 
the hills, with the music of distant bells filling all the 
air, to the church where grandmother's father had 
preached for fifty years, and where before him 
the pulpit was filled by more remote ancestors, to a 
date of antiquity too distant for my childish mind to 
grasp. There we filed into the family pews in 
solemn and definite order, and following the example 
of my grandmother, who observed every tradition 
as law and gospel, stood through the unmercifully 
long prayer, because it was the custom to do so in 
the days when her father shepherded this flock. 

" My father used to say," she solemnly instructed 
us, "that only those who were too lazy to stand or 
too proud to kneel would sit during prayer time"; 
and so we stood, fearing to be numbered among the 
proud and the lazy — which included all the re- 
mainder of the congregation except two faithful old 

100 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

deacons. These decaying relics of a past regime 
also stubbornly and accusingly stood, with my 
grandparents and their sons and more reluctant 
grandchildren, to record a last protest against the 
decadent spirit of the times. 

This clerical great-grandfather was a resourceful 
man. He employed more than one device to secure 
wakefulness on the part of his weary congregation. 
Standing during the prayer was but one of many. 
My grandmother used to tell us with pride of an 
instance which occurred at a time when a new 
church edifice had been proposed and was under 
warm discussion; great-grandfather thought this a 
worldly and unnecessary expense, and emphasized 
his opinion by pausing in the midst of his sermon 
on a Sabbath day, saying impressively as he fixed 
the somnolent members of his congregation with a 
stern look: 

*'You are talking about building a new church: 
it seems to me quite unnecessary, since the sleepers 
in the old one are all sound!" 

It was from this militant spirit that my grand- 
mother imbibed a taste for nonconformity with 
new customs, which kept the congregation in a 
chronic state of interest to discover what she might 

do next; and when, a martyr to her principles, she 

1(11 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

one day fainted from exhaustion during the long 
prayer, there were sisters in the flock who thought 
this a providential dispensation to bring her to a 
different view of her duty. They little knew her. 
She was soon brought to, and stood as undauntedly 
as ever in her place on the following Sunday. 

How long the hour's sermon seemed, only suffering 
childhood with legs too short to reach the floor can 
ever know. The footstools in the pews were but 
broken reeds to depend upon, for they were of the 
variety that tipped over easily; and a sudden crash 
was sure to fix the eyes of the whole congregation 
upon the culprit's wretched back, where they seemed 
to burn round holes in her clothing. 

It was difficult to know how to adjust one's down- 
sittings and uprisings in church, and sometimes one 
could not help feeling that advantage was taken of 
one's conscientious desire to do the right thing in the 
right place. A fatality seemed to attend my efforts in 
this direction. I once happened to be in a revival 
meeting when the minister requested all those who 
wanted to go to heaven when they died to rise. I 
did not wish to invite a horrible fate by sitting still, 
for I knew what was to be expected of the Adversary, 
and was accjuainted with the terrors of hell; so I 
rose, even though I noticed with sur})rise, after I 

102 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

had committed myself, that all the church members 
remained callously seated. We were then told to 
step forward, and I found myself w^ithout any voli- 
tion on my part, with others upon the "anxious 
seat," where we were prayed over with embarrassing 
personal directness. To be rescued from my sins 
in this unpremeditated manner was an alarming 
experience, and for years I was afraid to meet minis- 
ters upon the street for fear they might be tempted 
to seize me and save me over again. 

I had an uneasy feeling that I was not immune, 
for it never seemed to me that my first experience 
had really "taken" as it should, and I feared that I 
might be obliged to have it a second time if I exposed 
myself. I had been told by the minister, on this 
occasion, what the symptoms of a saved condition 
were; among other things, I was to "love my daily 
task," and if the love of God was really in my heart I 
should find myself quite unexpectedly singing over 
my work. My daily task was dish- washing, and I 
hated it with a perfect hatred; so this seemed an 
improbable result even then. However, I earnestly 
tried to feel as I should, and conscientiously raised a 
few quavering hymns over my tub in the ensuing 
days, since the singing refused to gush forth spon- 
taneously according to prophecy; but, much to 

103 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

my disappointment, I never came to love my daily 
task as I should. 

No such emotional stress attended the staid 
preaching of the word by our own minister, and on 
week days the children quite liked him. On Sunday 
it was a mere matter of enduring an hour of talk 
that we could not understand, and being prepared 
to answer all the questions and repeat the Golden 
Text of the Sunday school lesson. If we faithfully 
performed this task we were given a little yellow card ; 
after a certain number of these receipts had been 
achieved they were taken up by the Sunday school 
teacher, and we were given in exchange a blue card 
of a higher denomination. In due time, if we did 
not become weary in well-doing, we received a picture 
card three inches square in exchange for a certain 
number of blue tickets. 

AVhat higher awards awaited children of more 
sustained virtue I do not know from experience, but 
I seem to remember an older sister receiving a yellow 
catechism as compensation for learning an extra 
number of verses; and then, as a reward for learning 
the entire catechism and reciting it to the minister, 
she obtained a small Bible with very fine print. 
This seemed to me too much like the system of tlie 
parent who bribed his child to take cod-liver oil by 

101 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

giving him five cents for each dose, requiring him 
later to spend the money thus earned to buy more 
cod-liver oil. I therefore stopped at the picture 
card myself. 

At the close of the first preaching service we were 
allowed to spend the brief intermission between 
Sunday school and the next sermon in quietly 
eating two Boston crackers apiece, to stay the gnaw- 
ings of hunger and to fortify ourselves for privileges 
yet to come. Sometimes as a special favor we were 
permitted the secular diversion of a walk among 
the graves of our ancestors in the churchyard, but 
this was rare. The Boston crackers munched in 
a secluded corner of the sacred edifice were all that 
we could safely count upon, and by the law of asso- 
ciation this durable article became identified in our 
young minds with the shewbread of the temple 
and had a distinctly religious flavor. Split in two 
and nibbled in crumbs they were quite a long time 
in disappearing, and helped bridge over the awful 
chasm that yawned between breakfast and dinner. 

After the last sermon w^e climbed into the carry-alls 
once more, and drove home in the chastened joy of 
duty faithfully and exhaustively performed, and 
in fervent anticipation of Sunday dinner. On this 
day we slowly and properly masticated our food, 

105 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

for we well understood that it was the only carnal 
concession coming to us, and that after this respite 
we must wrestle with such subjects as Predestina- 
tion, Original Sin, and other items of faith and 
doctrine, in the pages of the Westminster Catechism. 
I found out early and to my cost, that even if one 
abstained from acquiring the catechism as a reward, 
it came just the same, though in a less friendly 
guise. 

On pleasant days we were permitted to conduct this 
spiritual exercise out of doors ; and I well remember 
carrying the little yellow book with me into the garden 
and mumbling, "Man's chief end is to glorify God 
and enjoy Him forever," to an audience of secular 
bees who were ostentatiously gathering honey in open 
defiance of the commandment to abstain from accus- 
tomed labor. I was also shocked by the nonconform- 
ist behavior of the cows, who persistently gave milk 
on the Sabbath day, and I asked the chore-boy — 
whom I found in all the splendor of his Sunday 
clothes, sitting miserable on the wall of the pig pen, 
munching green apples and studying his little yellow 
book — if he considered milking on Sunday a work 
of necessity or mercy. He gave it as his opinion 
that while it might perhaps be called a necessity, it 

could n't be called a work of mercy on any day in 

ma 




I A.sKi;ii iiiM 11 hi: (().\sii)i:iii;i) .Mii.ki\(, on Si \i)\\ a 
WoKK OF Nkckssiia (»i< Mi:i;( 1 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

the week; so my attempts to reconcile the secular 
order of creation with the divine command to 
cease from all ordinary pursuits on the seventh day, 
caused me much spiritual uneasiness. 

How grateful 1 am to that wonderful quality com- 
mon to all mankind by which all things seen in 
retrospect seem "apparelled in celestial light, the 
glory and the beauty of a dream!" Kind memory, 
like a bee, culls only the honey from experience. 
Those arduous Sabbaths of my childhood are sweet 
to look back upon, and who knows how they may 
have contributed to the formation of my character! 

Possibly the way the tree is at present inclined 
is not wholly convincing as to the way a twig should 
be bent. My Sabbath virtue was perhaps then, as 
now, somewhat assisted. Perhaps indeed, that was 
the inclination given to the twig, and my enforced 
virtue of to-day is the result of an early dependence 
upon having the path of rectitude too unmistakably 
pointed out to me. 

Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, to keep us from 
more secular diversions, my Spartan grandmother 
used to entertain us with accounts of her methods 
of instilling in her children habits of industry, this 
being the first virtue in her code. " When your father 
was a little boy," she would say, "I liad liim and his 

107 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

brothers learn to braid straw. Then every clay each 
one had a stint to perform, according to his age. Your 
father used to braid ten yards every day ; and when he 
had gone to bed at night I would burn it all up, for I 
had him do it, not because I needed the braid, but to 
inculcate habits of industry in his youth. I think 
it would be much better if each of you little girls 
performed some such task each day, for you know 
' Satan always finds soine mischief still for idle hands 
to do.' " She always finished this exhortation with 
a raisin apiece, drawn from the depths of her capa- 
cious pocket; so the severity of the moral was some- 
what mitigated in application. 

Ten yards a day — poor little boy! With all the 
glory of sunshine and enticing breezes without; 
with apples on the trees, and water in the swimming- 
hole; or in winter, with all the delights of coasting 
and skating to help keep Satan out of a job, what a 
terrible waste of golden hours! 

The bringing up of children is no such simple 
matter now as it was in early Now England days. 
I too have liad my theories and illuminations; but 
alas, I never loved a theory yet " but 't was the first 
one to decay." It is difficult to steer a safe course 
between the extremes of the old-fashioned monar- 
chical system of bringing up children, and the modern 

108 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

democratic perversion of letting them govern them- 
selves by their whims, lest their individuality be lost. 
True to my disposition, — conscientious but com- 
promising, — I sought hel}) from a kindergarten 
mothers' class, in the early days of the Little Maid's 
life, thinking that there I should find an inspired 
substitute for blind obedience. One evil day, when 
we were to be taught how to play with our darlings, 
I arrived late at the class, to find some stout and 
earnest mothers of my acquaintance trying to hop 
about the floor on their hands and feet after the 
manner of frogs, while the other mothers stood in 
a circle singing to the tune of " My Maryland " : 

"Taddy Pole and Polly Wog 

Ivived together in a bog, 
. And here you see the very pool 

Where they went to swimming school." 

I walked home behind the somewhat dishevelled 
Taddy Pole and Polly Wog, who earnestly discussed 
the morning's lesson, and since that time I have 
fallen back upon merely loving and giving my 
honest best to my child in sincere daily companion- 
ship, not attempting to stand to her "in the place 
of God," as the heroic parents of former generations 
felt called upon to do, nor yet to make a tadpole of 
myself in her educational interest. 

109 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

It is certainly an easier path, and for this reason 
my inherited conscience suspects it of lurking 
dangers. I confess to a pang of a purely heredi- 
tary nature when the Little Maid looked up to-day 
from the pages of a book she was reading and said, 
"Mother, who was Satan, or Satan — however you 
pronounce him? Sometimes I see his name in 
books. And what is the Catty Chisum ?" The sense 
of right and wrong is often as discriminating among 
children as among most grown people, for conscience 
is a universal gift; and I confess that I hesitate 
to force young innocence too soon into the path 
of conscious virtue. My own experience puts a 
premium upon natural growth in such matters 
and discounts hothouse methods of spiritual cult- 
ure. 

These conclusions from the lessons of the past 
swept over me with the flood of memories, as I con- 
scientiously gazed at the minister of Old Eden and 
let my thoughts wander in pleasant retrospect, keep- 
ing up meanwhile a deceitful appearance of absorbed 
attention. There are no mental excursions so de- 
lightful as those taken when there is occasion for 
attention. The soul seems to prepare its own 
feast even when it sits at the table of the Lord. The 
music and the sermon afford suggestions and hints 

110 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

which open vistas of memory and liope or visions 
that are too delightful to turn away from. 

After all, I believe if I were minister or musician, 
I should prefer to open the way for such joyous 
wanderings among the green pastures in each indi- 
vidual soul, rather than to secure an enforced and 
literal attention to the details of my own perform- 
ance. The spirit of the discourse determines the 
direction of one's excursion into the kingdom of 
the mind, and I am sure the little minister of Old 
Eden would not have felt that there was anything 
uncomplimentary to him or to the service could he 
have looked into my thoughts. He certainly could 
not have been other than pleased with the favor- 
able contrast which I drew between the sweet 
reasonableness of his service and the exhaustive 
nature of those I remembered; and as for the 
joy of childhood which flooded my retrospection, 
I have it still in such measure that I can say with 
my Wordsworth, 

"Oh, joy, that in my embers still doth live 
Something of that which was so fugitive!" 

My embers were further stirred to active glow 
by a delightful walk home from church, while the 
Little Maid and the rest stayed to Sunday school. 

Ill 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

The day was so beautiful, so full of Sabbath peace 
and stillness that I found myself humming as I 
walked along: 

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky," 

and feeling a wave of real thankfulness to my some- 
what strenuous early church privileges for the famil- 
iarity they enforced with the dear old hymns of 
Mother Church. It is a loss not to have them 
incorporated in one's very being. 

A mile or so from the church I left the highway 
and wandered along the river bank in an ecstasy 
of spring joy. The rippling water, the fresh salt 
breeze, the bird songs, and the charming stretches 
of meadow and hill all contributed to a state of 
beatitude which was crowned by the discovery of 
wild azalea in all the glory of its pink bloom. Some 
sprays of this I carried with me to a high rock 
which commanded a sweeping view, and there 1 
stayed in a passion of love for life, until the carriage 
appeared down the road bringing the family home 
from church. 

I watched it as it grew from a mere speck in the 
distance to a recognizable shape, until I heard the 
wheels rattle on the little bridge spanning the mill 
stream, and the sound of voices; then I came down 

112 



THE MEANS OF GRACE 

from my eminence, intercepted the carriage, and 
rode the rest of the way home. 

I am convinced that Cousin Henrietta is right. I 
ought to go to church, and I hke to go! 



113 



CHAPTER VIII 

VIEWPOINTS 

I HAVE found out that virtue offers other re- 
wards than itself; for last Sunday on the church 
steps I met a little dove-colored lady whom 
I had enjoyed looking at during the service, and she 
kindly invited Cousin Henrietta and me to call upon 
her that she might show us the old-fashioned garden 
which lies behind her beautiful old Colonial man- 
sion. 

The little lady herself deserves a word of special 
description, for she is so quaint a type, so wholly 
a New England product, that one would know her 
habitat at sight if one were to meet her in the 
antipodes. 

She was the distilled essence of Old Family. 
Serenity of conviction sat enthroned upon her brow, 
and her dress was a rebuke to the vulgar love of 
display sometimes found in less refined localities. 
It was a soft liquefaction of gray silk, made in a 
style so simple as to be a moral lesson in itself, and 
with no ornamentation whatever. Her bonnet, a 
real bonnet, with a bow under the chin, was also 
dove-colored and demure, and her face was saved 

114 



VIEWPOINTS 

from primness only by its rounded contours and 
sweetness of expression. It was a Sunday face 
every day in the week, and in looking upon it one's 
sins of inelegant English, of occasional colloquialisms, 
not to mention worse things, loomed large in the 
foreground of consciousness. 

I felt distinctly unworthy of her, and fortified my- 
self as I prepared to-day to call upon her, by an 
inward appeal to my ancestry, as I am sometimes 
driven to do when visiting in this part of the world. 
WTien I am at home they are allowed to rest in peace, 
as they are enjoined upon their tombs to do ; for in 
the West one is not judged by his ancestry but by 
his own behavior and achievement, and it is of no 
use to appeal to antecedents for present considera- 
tion, though reputable family history, even there, is 
no disgrace. 

"Don't be downcast! You can dig up grave- 
yards with anybody," I sternly quoted to myself. 
" Your ancestors came over in the 'Mayflower' just 
as much as hers did — perhaps more. You were 
trained in infancy to leave out your r's and use a 
broad a, and can still do it if you give your mind 
to it. All that any Chicagoan can hope for is to 
seek inconspicuousness by conformity." 

"I will do my best," said myself to me, and 

115 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

remembering that a Boston woman had once said 
that she liked to hear me speak because she enjoyed 
dialect, I set about restoring my English to its native 
purity by practising a few simple sentences like 
*'Annar has gone to the bahn," and "I told them 
to drawr it as they sawr it." 

"Maybe she will forgive my coming from the 
West after all," I thought, hopefully, as I completed 
my intellectual preparation and put on my hat. 
"She certainly looks like a Christian." 

Alas for my preparations! ^\Tien we reached 
our destination I gathered up all my rejected West- 
ern r's into one joyful "How perfectly lovely!" as 
I looked for the first time at the view from the 
gate. One who wishes to appear well in bor- 
rowed pronunciation must never be betrayed into 
enthusiasm. 

The large old Colonial mansion was framed in 
an archway of the high hedge which surrounded the 
grounds, and directly in front of the door was the 
most wonderful dogwood I ever saw, in an exuberant 
riot of white bloom. It stood by itself in the centre 
of an oval plot of grass bordered with a box hedge, 
and the effect was like that of a lime light thrown 
upon the star in the centre of a beautifully set stage. 
From every angle as we approached the house this 

116 



VIEWPOINTS 

lovely tree made a new and distracting composition, 
until at last we stood upon the high veranda and 
gazed back into its perfect beauty tli rough festoons 
of blooming wistaria. 

Our hostess met us at the entrance, and we lin- 
gered in the long hall which passed through the 
centre of the house to enjoy the vistas revealed by 
the open door at either end. Through the door- 
way at the front of the house we saw the white 
wonder of the dogwood, while that at the rear re- 
vealed such a garden as one sees but rarely even in 
New England. 

For many generations this garden has been kept 
and tended, each successive owner adding new 
beauties and carefully preserving the old, until now 
there are fifteen hundred feet of box hedges border- 
ing garden paths, shaded in places by the overhang- 
ing boughs of apple and other blossoming trees. 
The flowers are arranged for careful combinations 
of color in succeeding blooms, and the paths are 
laid out in a quaint sort of maze, with an old foun- 
tain at the centre, the formal and picturesque fea- 
tures being blended in such a way as to produce 
an effect full of character as well as charm. 

Individuality is as marked in gardens as in peo- 
ple, and this one was perfect of its kind. It was 

117 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

eloquent of hereditary respectability and refinement, 
a typical Colonial garden. 

As we wandered about among the paths I was 
startled by a slender girl in white who was feeding 
three infant crows bread and milk, with a spoon. 
Was there ever a paradise without its temptation, 
I wondered, and remorseful remembrance of my 
personal fall pursued me to the front veranda, where 
our hostess placed chairs for us and continued the 
conversation about the last missionary meeting, which 
she had begun with Cousin Henrietta in the garden. 

I was happy, gazing into the heart of the dogwood, 
breathing the scent of the wistaria, and asking no 
more of life than just to be, but the hostess politely 
included me in the conversation by means of a ques- 
tion addressed to my cousin. "Is your friend 
interested in foreign missions, Mrs. Marston.?" she 
asked, with an encouraging smile at me. 

Henrietta took base advantage of the implication 
of her glance, and left me to answer for myself. I 
hastily considered my convictions. "If I say I am; 
Cousin Henrietta will think me mendacious; and 
if I say I 'm not, they '11 both think me irreligious. 
As I can't face either alternative I '11 fall back on 
Flanders," was my conclusion; and aloud I com- 
promised after this impersonal fashion: 

118 



VIEWPOINTS 

"Missions everywhere are entitled to respect, and 
I certainly would not set geographical boundaries 
to helpfulness, though perhaps the need for home 
missionary effort appeals to me most strongly. In 
this beautiful country you have so little misery at 
hand, it is natural to seek to relieve it at greater dis- 
tances. The missionary spirit, like every other, 
seeks new forms of expression; and the settlement 
movement in our large cities seems to me one of the 
most helpful and effective of its modern incarnations." 
And in my blindness I congratulated myself on hav- 
ing spoken the truth with tact, and trumped the 
trick since I was unable to follow suit; I was there- 
fore surprised to see that she looked gently dis- 
turbed. 

"I've heard something about settlements," she 
said doubtfully; "but — they are not religious, are 
they.^ Of course I cannot but feel that unless they 
are religious in character they are but temporary 
expedients and not upon permanent foundations." 

I thought of some of the settlement workers whom 
I knew, and contented myself with saying that I 
supposed that could -hardly be answered without go- 
ing back to one's definition of religion — and there I 
had the extraordinary wisdom to pause, for I learned 
long ago that there are two subjects which Chicago 

119 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

women cannot safely trust themselves to discuss, 
and religion is one of them. Chicago is the other. 

Her next question made escape impossible, how- 
ever, and broke my excellent record for the day; 
for what 1 forbore saying to her I poured forth 
upon my innocent cousin Henrietta on the way 
home. 

"You come from Chicago, do you not.'* " she said, 
with more of pity than of blame in her voice, 

"Yes, but — ," I began, with a despairing clutch 
at my ancestry. 

"Perhaps you can tell me, then," she continued, 
not noticing my attempt to introduce extenuating 
circumstances, "why it is that such a very large pro- 
portion of the money sent to foreign missions comes 
from New England, and so little from the West.^" 

"If it is true, I 'm afraid I can't," I said with a 
miserable sense of responsibility, "unless it is be- 
cause we see so many things to do nearer home. 
You see, we are still young, and have many things yet 
to conquer which older places overcame long ago." 

" I should think that might be so, " she assented, 
"for I visited Chicago at the time of the World's Fair. 
Of course the Fair was — quite nice — but Chicago! " 
— an expressive shudder finished the sentence. 

" Chicago is rather an acquired taste as a rule," 

120 



VIEWPOINTS 

I admitted, "but if one lives there long enough to 
get any appreciation of the real Chicago, it is impos- 
sible to help loving it for its liberality and progressive- 
ness and its splendid energy. It is inspiring to be in 
the making of things. 

"No one has to learn to love New England; you 
just can't help it. But I love the West too, and am 
glad I have had the opportunity to live there long 
enough to appreciate its great significance to our 
times. We are living history there to-day as ear- 
nestly as it was lived in New England a few genera- 
tions ago, don't you see ? " I finished with what was 
intended for a conciliatory smile, but she wore a 
frozen look. 

"Indeed! " she said. "Well — I have heard that 
you are very progressive out there — if you call it so. 
But who is it that says ' Mere motion is not progress' ? 
You tolerate all sorts of strange heresies, do you 
not.^ I trust you personally are not in sympathy 
wuth any of the absurd movements which I under- 
stand are allowed to flourish there. The religion of 
my fathers is good enough for me, and I think a 
reasonable conservatism a great safeguard. The 
tendency of the West to run after every new thing 
would seem to me a serious menace to real spiritual 
progress." 

HI 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

I had sins enough of my own to answer for without 
being held responsible for the aggregate shortcomings 
of Chicago, and I cast an imploring look at Cousin 
Henrietta to urge a termination of our call before our 
hostess should inquire about the stock yards, or any 
other of my hidden vices. She mercifully responded 
to my signal and made a tactful move, and after 
sliding gently down an " inclined plane of conversa- 
tion " reaching from the veranda to the front gate, 
we took our departure. 

My cousin Henrietta is a well-poised woman of 
large silences and well-considered speech. Her 
reticence acts like a poultice, and draws out all the 
talk there is in me, while her poise heals any inflam- 
mation of ideas from which I may be suffering. It 
was, therefore, a joy indeed to pour into her attentive 
ear, as we drove home, some of the things I had 
longed to say and did not, in regard to the Eastern 
point of view. 

"Why is it, oh, why is it," I complained, "that 
the attitude of the New Englander is as it is toward 
people who live west of the Alleghany Mountains ? 
Even an Eastern ancestry scarcely mitigates the rigor 
of their opinion. It is not my experience alone, but 
the general verdict among Western people that they 
are treated like a Race Problem by those who live in 

122 



VIEWPOINTS 

the East. It is n't because they know the West, for 
we are accustomed to patronage from people here who 
have scarcely travelled out of their ow^n county in their 
lives. One might think that was what ailed them, 
if the educated ones were not the same. It points 
the moral of Howells's remark that ' Bostonians 
should never travel — it undermines their judgment.' 
There is no comprehension of the significance of 
Chicago in the history of our country, nor of the 
great world-forces that are grinding together there 
as nowhere else in the world.'' 

'*Hear! Hear!" interrupted Cousin Henrietta; 
"you sound like a Fourth of July speech." But I 
was not to be diverted by flippancy. 

" Chicago is no Cranford, I '11 admit, and it has n't 
the natural beauties of Boston; it's no place to die 
in, and it's not a good place to display acquired 
wealth; but for the living man and woman, inter- 
ested in the world's work and progress and feeling 
the pulse of humanity, it is full of opportunity and 
interest. It is the heart of our democracy, and 
the failure to understand it is evidence that we must 
look for the preservation of our democratic ideals 
to the younger communities rather than to those 
which have arrived, ^^^lat would the authors of 
the Declaration of Independence say — " 



123 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

*'Oh, come now," said Cousin Henrietta, "you 
need n't drag that immortal document into this 
discussion! It needs rest, it is so overworked by 
other orators. Come back to your own grievances 
and take on! Let me know the worst!" 

'* I could n't relate all the instances that have 
come under my personal observation in the years 
that I have been so well acquainted with East and 
West," I replied. "Besides, I try to forgive and 
forget, but I suppose the worm has turned. You 
know that I am a mild woman" (she dared to laugh), 
" but a short time before I left home I encountered a 
young woman who had not yet lived down her Eastern 
origin, who was expressing herself with much point 
and emphasis after having spent but a few days in 
Chicago. She said all the people were common 
and vulgar, that it was nothing but an aggregation 
of filth and materialism, — and so on, until she had 
quite spent her vocabulary of detractives. You 
may not believe me, my poor Henrietta, but I did 
not answer back! I just said with marked relevancy, 
*How do you like the last Sargent in the Boston 
Library ? ' But she held to her subject with won- 
derful tenacity, and finished by pronouncing Chicago 
men 'unspeakable.' She said they 'made her re- 
gret all the men she had been turning down in 

124 



VIEWPOINTS 

Boston.' This was so overwlielniing wlicii you 
consider their scarcity there that I was rendered 
speechless. AMiy — wlien I was a young girl in 
Boston I vowed I would never marry an Eastern 
man because it would be impolite to take one wdien 
there were n't enough to go round. Do you know, 
she actually married a Western man after all! 
She had no more principle! I suppose she has 
found out by this time that they have hands, organs, 
dimensions, senses, affections, passions, like other 

people." 

"That's sheer perversion of Shakespeare — it's 
^^orse, — it's play to the galleries," Henrietta said 
severely. " I don't pity you at all. You are able to 
look out for yourself when you are trampled upon. 
Moreover, you can't blame people for loving their 
own homes. It has certainly been one of the great 
factors in making New England what it is, and 
when the result is so satisfactory it is no wonder 
we appreciate it. I suppose our complacency is 
the natural tax of our advantages." 

"There's only one drawback to New England," 
I sighed, "and that 's its perfection and consciousness 
of it. It 's a spoiled child. Because it is so beauti- 
ful it really thinks it has some sort of divine right. 
I suppose we have helped in the s])oiling, for Wcst- 



1-25 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

erners love the East more than is good for it. It 
is n't that I want New Englanders to love New 
England less, but the West a little more. We 're 
her children, and she should be more maternal in 
her feeling toward us." 

Circumstances and Cousin Henrietta allowed me 
the last word, for just as I reached this period, we 
turned in at the gate of Marston Hill. Her for- 
bearance moved me to a just appreciation. 

"At any rate, I will say for you, Cousin-once- 
removed Henrietta," I concluded, impressively; 
" that you are a notable exception. You have nev^er 
said an unkind word. May Heaven bless you for 
your kind ones ; there have even been a few of those. 
But it is the way of the world that the innocent 
should suffer for the guilty, and you have borne 
my jeremiade like the saint you are! Don't you 
know temperance lectures never reach the ears that 
need them, but are listened to by kind ladies of 
sober habits .^ and I — " 

"Stop your nonsense and get out," she com- 
manded, and I obediently descended from the 
carriage into a chaos of barking dogs and the Little 
Maid's outstretched arms. 



126 



CHAPTER IX 

INTERMEZZO 

FOR several days I have made no record, for 
the final hours of the final days of our visit to 
Marston Hill were too full to permit me to 
dwell upon experiences and taste their flavor with 
true epicurean relish. Moreover, this is a book of 
joys, and I should not wish to class my departure 
from Marston Hill as a joy, even though the jour- 
ney from Old Eden to Boston resolves itself in my 
memory into a continuous panorama of lovely 
pictures framed by the car windows. 

There is no more beautiful ride in beautiful New 
England, I am sure, than that provided for the 
pleasure of the traveller in this journey. The proc- 
ess of going affords such delight to the eye that 
the wishing carpet of Arabia would be a drug on the 
market to right-minded travellers in this region, 
which, for its luxuriant beauty, has been justly 
described as the tropics of the temperate zone. 

Glimpses of a blue, blue sea, flecked with occa- 
sional sails in inlets and bays; of old wharves and 
shipping, of picturesque houses of the beautiful 
gray color found only near salt water, of tumultuous 

127 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

hills garlanded with elms, of farms with cattle idly 
chewing their cuds, beside little rivers flowing through 
golden marshes into the sea — these succeeded 
each other in kaleidoscopic variety and an infinity 
of charm throughout the entire distance. In the 
State of Connecticut there are no grade crossings, 
and the traveller enjoys a sense of security rarely 
possible in our America. In many places where it 
had been necessary to cut through solid rock to 
make the road-bed viaducts bridged the chasms, 
and the rocky passages were so covered with vines 
and buried in shrubbery that it was like passing 
from bower to bower as the train flew along. 

At this time of year when the world is adorned with 
the fresh green of young summer, when the eye 
meets surprises of beauty at every turn, when blos- 
soms and verdure rival each other in loveliness, and 
the blue distance shows opalescent tints under the 
flying clouds, I know of no more satisfying exj^erience 
than to ride thus through God's country, to enrich the 
memory by such a store of beauty. Best of all the 
journey was the conclusion of it, for it ended as 
journeys should, in a lovers' meeting. There, on 
the station platform as the train pulled in, stood my 
Adam, faithful to his promise to join us in Boston 
and go with us for a summer holiday to the tlear old 

128 



INTER INIEZZO 

homestead; and we made all haste in crossing the 
city from one station to the other in order to get the 
first train for Elmwood. Finding that we had a 
few moments to spare, we went over to the Public 
Library near by to enjoy the Sargent decorations, 
and to show the Little Maid once more the pictures 
of the Quest of the Grail; for I have been reading 
to her from the "Morte d' Arthur" since she saw 
them last, and she is therefore better prepared to 
understand and appreciate them. 

We were repaid for the effort in more than one 
way, for in addition to our aesthetic satisfaction, we 
really saw and heard the typical 15oston female as 
portrayed in cartoons and libellous jokes. 

We were sitting in the hushed atmosphere of 
Sargent Hall, gazing at the first lunette, when a 
strident voice shattered the silence. Everybody 
started and looked around in time to see a determined- 
looking female emerge from the stairway, followed 
by a meek but disturbed-looking man. She was 
a formidable person, with a figure suggestive of a 
fallen cake, and clothes of a fearlessly sensible cut, 
which did not fit her. Iler hair was strenuously 
arranged in a round door-knob at the back of her 
head, and she was crowned by a crime in millinery — 
no less. It was a hal of severe shape and j)r()portion, 

129 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

with a floral wreath hke a funeral piece surrounding 
the crown. The whole structure was anchored by 
an elastic band which passed under the door-knob, 
giving an undeniably tidy effect to the composition. 
Her glance was of uncompromising directness, even 
though it was obliged to pierce the heavy lenses of 
a pair of spectacles to reach its object, and she 
addressed her companion as if he were an audience, 
interspersing her remarks with Latin quotations. 
This is no fancy picture. So she really appeared. 

As she paused before the first lunette, we appre- 
hended that she was about to let fall an oracle, and 
listened attentively. We were not disappointed. 
She waved a forefinger at the Children of Israel, 
writhing under the lash of the kings, gazed sternly 
at the Assyrian lion and the Egyptian Sphinx, and 
said, disapprovingly: 

"I cannot understand how any person of taste 
could put such messes of red and blue as that upon 
a wall. It offends my color sense. Moreover, I do 
not approve of the subject. I do not object to histor- 
ical things, and real ancient historical things at that, 
but such creatures as those [indicating the Sphinx] 
never really existed, and I cannot see why they 
should be represented in such a place as tliis! For 
my part, I think it would have })een nuicli more 

VM 



I N T E R INI E Z Z O 

appropriate to place tlicre portraits of some of our 
leading Boston Citizens!" 

Then she passed beneath the tables of the law in 
the hands of Moses, and disappeared into the dim- 
ness of a room beyond, while we made all speed 
downstairs and out into the sunlight of Copley 
Square; for, as Kipling says, "the necessity was 
upon us to laugh," and also to catch the train for 
Elmwood. 



131 



CHAPTER X 

THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

THIS day has held a double measure of joys, 
for in its golden hours I have had the realiza- 
tion of present happiness mingled with the 
pleasures of memory; and now, though it is late and 
every other member of this great household is probably 
asleep, I have crept out of bed to enjoy it all over 
again quite by myself; to caress the day and appre- 
ciate it anew before it slips away into the past to 
become a memory in its turn. 

"This time," I said to myself, as we — a reunited 
family — prepared to take the train from Boston 
which was to carry us to the homestead and the 
waiting clan, "this time I will not be tardy with my 
happiness. I will keep tryst with it to-day, and 
realize how rich my life is now. Experiences are 
always slipping by without my tasting them with 
true relish, but to-day I will live my life to the full" — 
and I believe that I have! 

This has been a day of family reunions in the 
lovely surroundings which are associated with childish 
joys, and to-night as I sit in the room which I left 
as a bride, and to whicli 1 now return "bringing 

132 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

my sheaves with me," I am overcome with a realiza- 
tion of the cumulative wealth of experience. My 
sheaves are both sound asleej), and 1 have carefully 
screened their eyes from the light lest my vigil dis- 
turb their repose, while I give thanks for the divine 
mathematics of family life. 

My father and mother are perhaps wakeful too, 
thinking similar thoughts, and counting their har- 
vest of thirteen souls, children and grandchildren, 
all garnered under the old roof to-night. Even 
this is not a complete account, for another son will 
be added to the number in a few days, when this 
house party culminates in a wedding under the elms 
on the lawn ; where also my Adam and I were married. 

To come again after any absence into the encir- 
cling: shadow of the dear old trees which crown the 
hilltop and embower the old house in a wealth of 
living green is like being brooded under maternal 
wings. The elms of New England are an element 
in the homesickness of every one of her wandering 
children; and the trees which give Elmwood its 
name arch above the entrance drive, fling protecting 
branches over the ancient rooftree, shade the spa- 
cious lawn, give harl)or and comfort to our occupa- 
tions, and healing and solace to weary bodies and 
minds. They even enter with beautiful playfulness 

133 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

into the sports of the children, and droop long 
branches nearly to the ground for them to catch 
and swing upon in their play, as their parents and 
grandparents did before them. 

These trees are also our private family chapel; 
under their spreading branches a hundred years 
ago the strict old Puritan divine whose portrait 
looks down so severely from its place in the hall 
upon his descendants, used to write the sermons 
which are still spoken of in this region for their 
pungent and personal applications, and the home- 
stead and town both bear even now the marks of 
his strong personality. I can see him in imagina- 
tion in his cocked hat, knee breeches, silk stockings, 
and silver-buckled shoes, — a costume which he 
wore long after every one else had adopted the 
bifurcated horror of trousers, — responding gravely 
to the respectful salutations which were accorded 
him by every one who passed him as he walked 
along the village streets. A bow from the boys and 
a courtesy from the girls were the invariable tributes 
paid the sacred office, for the New England minister 
was regarded as the ambassador of God. 

The idea of aristocracy dies hard, and in New 
England it manifested itself in a certain distinction 
conferred upon the minister. lie was a sort of 



THE OLD II O .M E S T E A D 

spiritual feudal lord, and the superiority of his 
family was such that marriage with any member of 
it was looked upon as a social event requiring due 
observance. 

When the dominie's eldest daughter went to 
Boston to buy her household treasures before her 
marriage to a young doctor, the whole town turned 
out to see her go; and for a time it seemed doubtful 
if the second daughter could marry at all, for she 
was loved by a mere deacon's son, whose humble 
social position made it difficult for him to address 
her. She, however, had no mind to miss the common 
joys of life for such a cause, and having made a 
shrewd guess about the state of his feelings, she took 
the reins in her own hands. At a party, from which 
she made exemplary departure at nine o'clock, 
John's state of mind was apparent, yet he did not 
dare offer to see her home; so she stepped to the 
middle of the room, her black eyes dancing with 
mischief, and said in a clear voice, "If no one here 
has any objection I should like to have John wait 
u})on me home; and if any one has, let him speak 
now or forever hold his peace." It is needless to 
add that the deh'giited John settled the matter on 
the walk home that night. They were married soon 
after, and came to this dear old place to live. 



135 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

Here as time went on she developed more of the 
fearless characteristics of her father, the minister. 
She wore her clothes twenty years out of fashion as 
he had done before her, and never parted with a 
bonnet. The ladies of the church got tired of 
seeing the same one appear year after year and they 
expressed themselves about it at a historical meet- 
ing of the Sewing Society, from which she was 
absent. The village doctor happened in for a 
moment on an errand, when the ladies were at the 
most animated point, and as he dearly loved a 
joke, he repeated the whole thing to madam 
within the hour, and together the two miscreants 
planned a bombshell for the Society. \\liile the 
ladies were at their tea the doctor appeared once 
more and announced to the meeting that Mrs. John 
sent word that, if the ladies would decide what sort 
of bonnet she ought to wear, she would try to meet 
their views, but pending such instruction she would 
continue to wear her old one, which was still in 
good condition. And wear it she did, until it went 
the way of all the earth and a new one became a 
necessity. 

The new bonnet was to be finished on a Saturday 
ready for church on Sunday morning, and as Sunday 
observance began at nightfall Saturday evening, one 

130 




"Hi; i»\ri;i) \ Hkdki.n Sriiiir i kom iii\i llix k 



THE OLD II O M E S T K A I) 

of her sons was despatclied hetinies to bring it home 
from the milliner's. He went on horseback, and 
as she feared for the safety of the box by this means 
of transportation, she commanded him to wear the 
bonnet home on liis head. Disobedience was a 
thing unthought of in that family, and the town was 
therefore shaken to its foundations by the spectacle 
of a wretched boy riding through the main street of 
the village with ]\Irs. John's new bonnet displayed 
upon his head. 

As for the boy, he dated a broken spirit from that 
hour and never suffered again from false pride. 
Whether or not Grandfather John was always 
comfortable, it is certain that he was never bored, 
for there was not a dull moment between their mar- 
riage and their golden wedding, when he exhibited 
his wife to his many descendants with all the j)ride 
of a young bridegroom. 

Some of her bonnets still remain in an old chest, 
under the eaves in the attic, which is even now full 
of old-fashioned clothes and furniture, a veritable 
treasure house of the past. Her father's hat and 
shoe-buckles and many of his sermons are still there; 
and the last years of her life were spent in going over 
these hoarded treasures, reading old love-letters 
or fiery sermons and transfornnng them into tajxTs 

i;57 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

for lighting candles — for to waste a scrap of paper 
was an unpardonable sin in her eyes. In this way 
she passed the torch of one generation on to the next, 
using the record of one flame, appropriately, in the 
kindling of another. 

Her excessive regard for ministers caused her to 
treasure with particular care everything that had 
ever belonged to one. It is for this reason that the 
chairs in the house have most of them theological 
leanings. The old Queen Anne corner chair oppo- 
site me belonged to the Reverend Elijah, who 
antedated the Reverend Nathaniel of the portrait; 
and the chair in which the carver sits at the table 
went through the Harvard divinity school in the 
early seventeen hundreds. The one in which I 
am now sitting belonged to a distinguished divine 
of Arminian tendencies, who was a friend of the Rev. 
Nathaniel in spite of the discrepancies which yawned 
between their theological views; and the little oval 
table on which I write was one from which he often 
ate a repast spread for him by the hands of his duti- 
ful wife, Olive, whose portrait hangs near his in the 
hall. 

Under the great elms which formed his outdoor 
study, some of us of this generation were baptized 
into the faith of our fathers, and liere, too, we have 

138 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

brought our own children for christening. In their 
shadow in these later days have been held many 
parliaments on Sunday afternoons, when the deeply 
rooted polemical instincts of the family, perhajjs 
inherited from this same preacher of the church 
militant, have been allowed free play in the discussion 
of some book or event of public interest. At such 
times one member of the family reads aloud to a 
congregation scattered about in untrammelled atti- 
tudes upon the grass, and starts by this means a 
discussion in which young and old take earnest and 
voluble part. 

In a large family of varied opinions we have 
found that there is no safety valve, if we would 
dwell together in unity, like taking an impersonal 
subject and discussing it freely. It is like providing 
a puppy with a harmless root to prevent his chewing 
up one's wardrobe, or like a lightning rod, through 
which mental electricity may be safely conducted 
into the ground. 

In this out-door forum we have disposed of the 
various questions of interest which have agitated 
the public mind during the Summers that we have 
gathered here. It has been a vahial)le experience 
in itself; for though it was seldom that wc all arrived 
at the same j)()int of view, we at least individually 

i:}y 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

found our own, and that is perhaps the best possible 
result in any discussion. 

If the spoken word is eternal, as mystics claim, 
then what echoes and contradictory murmurings 
from all the things that have been said here in the 
past must still linger among the swaying branches 
of these old elms! I can almost catch the sound 
of them as I lean from my window and look up into 
the leafy dome. How true it is that "the theology 
of one age is the mythology of the next"! Fierce 
denunciations of the sinful race, and vivid word pic- 
tures of a lake of perpetual fire, from some of the 
sermons prepared on this spot by the Rev. Nathaniel, 
alternate with selections from Andrew D. White's 
"Warfare between Science and Theology," or with 
recent contributions to the literature of the Higher 
Criticism read by his descendants. 

Crashing sermons on the subordinate sphere of 
Woman, also in the voice of the preacher, make 
common cause with Miinsterberg's modern "Amer- 
ican Traits" in condemning some of the activities 
of that sex which has always provided so many rid- 
dles for masculine solution. 

Occasionally there is a topic u{)on which the voices 
of both past and present agree. Arguments over the 
Race Problem there are none, for the doctrines of the 

140 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

early abolitionists were heard long ago under these 
trees, and the stories of fugitive slaves as well; for 
Elmwood was a station of the underground road 
before the war, and family convirtions on this 
question have never altered, even though there is an 
ancient will among the archives, in which a Massa- 
chusetts ancestor bequeathed a slave to a member of 
the family of Great-grand motlier Olive. 

In some respects the voices of the past, as they 
come back to me in the niurmurings among the 
trees, are less stern than those of the present. The 
words concerning questions of industrial reform 
and the liquor traffic are all modern. In the old 
days these problems had no existence in the minds 
of even thoughtful people, and the minister has no 
doubt sipped his toddy with serene relish on the 
very spot where later generations have declared for 
prohibition. 

There are also a thousand echoes of less strenuous 

occasions — of gay talk about a table twenty feet 

long, of after-dinner stories and hearty laughter; 

for the old elm trees have arched our dining-hall 

through many golden summers, and hosts of friends 

have l)een sheltered here under its hospitable grcrn 

roof. Here have come during the years people not 

unknown in the world's work, who have sat under 

in 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

the elms beside an outdoor hearth fire, and talked of 
many things, while the moon hung low in the sky, 
lighting the table about which we lingered late. 

Life in all its phases, generations of life, have 
passed in continuous procession under the Gothic 
arch of these old trees, and every root, branch, and 
twig is nourished with family history and tradition. 
^^^lat wonder that to us they seem different from all 
other trees in the world, and that we feel toward 
them as toward silent friends who know but never 
betray the secrets of the years ? Their branches 
have arched over some funerals during the years, and 
over many brides, but I was the first to be mar- 
ried under them in the Cathedral of Out-of-Doors. 

If the romances they have witnessed were re- 
corded upon their leaves, what a library they would 
bear! They were here when the Indians were still 
wandering over these hills. They were here to watch 
the building of the old homestead. They welcomed my 
grandmother as a bride, and in after years sheltered 
the window which framed her old face until she too 
slipped away to join the invisible choir, and passed 
beneath them for the last time. Here her sons 
brought home their brides to visit the old father 
and mother, and here they were welcomed on their 
return from the war. Beneath them every day 

142 



f 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

for many years their children passed, creeping not 
unwillinglv to school — for what New Enirhind 
child ever scorned an education ? And now their 
children's children play in their generous shadow 
and swing from the swaying limbs, which droop as 
of yore almost to the ground. 

How amid such a sea of memories am I to sound 
only those deeps of feeling which I have voyaged 
through to-day? Every view from the car windows, 
as we came from Boston, was as familiar as the 
face of a friend ; and when we reached the old sta- 
tion which has been the scene of so many dramas of 
meeting and parting, my heart was already crowded 
with reminiscences. 

The first reunion on this spot that I remembered 
came one snowy day of my childhood when grand- 
father met us at this station to take us to the old 
home for a genuine New England Thanksgiving. 
There too I had passed through every conceivable 
comedy of errors attendant upon arrivals at a station 
four miles from home, in a region where communica- 
tion by mail or telegraph is still subject to the delib- 
erate movement of officials who always put oil' till 
to-morrow what should have been done last week. 

Here I had arrived to spend many a school holiday, 
and here at last I met and welcomed my Adam 

143 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

himself when he came to marry me under the old 
elm trees. There was no unseemly throwing of 
rice and old shoes when we set forth, for the wedding 
guests went before, leaving an opportunity for a 
quiet good-bye to the family gathered under the 
trees to see us off, and a last view of handkerchiefs 
waving in the moonlight as we drove beneath their 
drooping arch out into the world together. 

Thus the old trees helped us to avoid the frivolities 
and indignities which too often accompany iimerican 
weddings. I wonder how a Buddhist, or a Hindoo 
philosopher would describe our American wedding 
customs. They furnish legitimate ground for mis- 
sionary efforts on our behalf, to any people of an 
alien point of view. 

But I must come back to the happy present, out 
of which I am continually dropping into the happy 
past. The electric road has now become such a 
feature of rural life in New England that, as one 
sententious Yankee said, "You can go somewhere 
nowadays quicker than you can stay at home." 

This destroyer of distance now takes us three 
miles of our homeward way so swiftly that we never 
attempt to have carriages meet us at the station; 
and so the Little Maid, her father, and I climbed to 
the front seat of the car in order to get the first view 

li4 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

of all the familiar scenes as we flew along. The 
landmarks in the liand of Dreams were all about 
me; for to childhood that land lies in the very midst 
of the actual, yet is not the actual. 

On the right we passed the red brick house sig- 
nalized to my childhood as the "Home of the Two 
Old Maids and the Two Old Bachelors." Only 
two old faces look from the window now as we 
hurry by. 

Beyond this lies the house built by Sir Harry 
Frankland as a home for Agnes Surriage; and near 
it is the old place where great-great-grandfather 
lived; and in the dooryard is a giant elm which, as a 
sapling, he once nearly mowed down with a scythe! 

At the top of the next hill we knew where to look 
for the old red barn, miles away, in which so many 
delightful rainy days of childhood were spent, and 
the sun, shining on the windows of the cupola, 
flashed a welcoming signal. The house was hidden 
behind the elm trees, which even at this distance 
made a mighty mound of green on the hilltop; and 
ihc ])arn also disappeared as we rounded a curve 
and sped on, past the ancient burying-ground where 
"the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," past the 
wood road where we used to hunt arbutus in the 
Sj:)ring, up and up the next long hill, until at the top 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

we saw again the familiar church spire, climbing 
still farther into the blue. 

Here beside the church more ancestors are buried, 
and Adam asked solemnly if the two graveyards 
were rival plants. I was proud to tell him that in 
this town we had always been of a liberality so pro- 
nounced that we had buried all sects except Catho- 
lics in the same plot of ground. Down on the 
cape each denomination had its own burying-ground, 
but here death has always swept denominational 
lines into the oblivion they deserve. 

The corner of the common beside the drinking 
fountain has been for many years the family trysting 
place, as the pyramids were to the Peterkin family 
in Egypt ; and there we found the carry-all, beloved of 
our infancy, now almost too ancestral to be useful, 
waiting to take us over the remaining hills to Elm- 
wood, while an open wagon was in attendance to 
receive our trunks. We were a merry procession 
as we jogged along through the long street of the 
village, past houses in most of which, as I explained 
to Adam, I had been born and had died many times; 
for all of them had been inhabited for generations by 
different branches of the family, and every one of 
them is engulfed in the subconscious areas of my 
being. 

IKi 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

Under the trees in one dooryard they were having 
a family party, — years before I was born, — when 
the news of the death of an uncle in the Ixjrder 
troubles of Kansas came to sadden the merrymaking; 
yet I feel that I was there. Under the same trees, 
years later, we played at recess time, or, during the 
long nooning, ate the luncheon we had brought to 
school in the cherished little tin pails which were 
our chief treasures. We had picked blueberries 
in the pastures to purchase these tin pails and had 
bargained for them ourselves with the tin peddler 
when that romantic character one day stopped at 
our kitchen door to exchange new tinware for old 
rags and something to boot. The winding road- 
ways of New England seem to miss this once familiar 
figure with his load of bright tinware flashing in the 
sun. He made a wonderful appeal to our childish 
imaginations. 

Oh, for the joy in present possessions that there 
was for us in those little tin pails! They seemed to 
suggest and carry with them an aroma from the 
fields of clover and golden-rod which they had 
looked down upon from the top of the cart. They 
had seen the great world which lay beyond tlie 
distant ramj)art of blue hills that bounded our 
horizon. These tin j)ails had but one fault. Some- 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

times they seemed too small to hold all that our 
healthy young appetites demanded at noon. A 
piece of pie was nearly always shorn of some of its 
corners to be made to fit. On the other hand, it 
seemed framed by Providence for the transportation 
of the Boston cracker, which formed the foundation 
layers of our luncheon; doughnuts also fitted to 
perfection, though the hole in the middle seemed 
rather a waste of space. Cold bread pudding could 
be most economically packed away in them, but 
cold bread pudding we felt to be an imposition upon 
hungry childhood. Nothing reconciled us to it but 
the generosity of the supply, which is often a charac- 
teristic of undesirable things, and the occasional 
raisin buried in its depths. 

A yellow barn on our left was once the schoolhouse, 
and the disused room, filled with little desks, still 
remains as it was in the distant days when Miss 
Mary and Miss Hannah had charge of the training 
of our infant minds. 

Into this very barn, Bertie, the best loved and the 
naughtiest boy in school, one day rode a stray pig, 
to the rapt admiration of the younger girls of the 
school, who had assembled to encourage valor with 
the })resence of beauty. There too, during the long 
noonings, after having emptied the tin pails, we 

148 



THE OLD IIO:\IESTEAD 

beguiled the time with tableaux, arranged with 
great effect in the empty stalls of the stable portion 
of the building. On one such occasion I remember 
the pride with which I personated the " Madonner 
Doloroser" — who she might be being quite beyond 
my severely Protestant ken — under the skilful 
management of an older and more sophisticated girl. 
I remember that I was draped in an old black shawl 
and knelt in the Rembrandt shadow of the clean 
stall gazing with an agonized expression at a crack in 
the roof, while a real tear, extracted from the pump, 
twinkled effectively in the light upon my upturned 
check. 

The tableau dearest of all to our hearts, and 
enacted over and over again to delighted audiences, 
was arranged in two scenes, known respectively 
as the " Happy-Family- Without-Suspicion," and 
"The Sequel." The first scene disclosed the happy 
family artistically disposed in the somewhat limited 
space of the horse stall. A barrel served as a centre 
table, and upon it stood an imaginary lamp Beside 
it, reading instructive literature to a numerous 
progeny, sat a mother who endeavored to express in 
her chubby face all the virtues ascribed in scripture 
to the uKjdel wife. The children were ixathered in 
attitudes of absorbed attention about the mother's 

149 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

knee, while in the background one of the boys — 
when we were able to persuade him — loomed large 
as the father of this ideal group. 

The cast was not always so complete, for if there 
happened to be only one boy available, as was 
usually the case, he preferred to take the other 
masculine role in this affecting picture. It was 
his privilege to lie in an attitude of fearful stealth, 
along the top of the stall, pointing a loaded broom 
handle with deadly aim directly at the Happy- 
Family- Without-Suspicion. There was no affecta- 
tion of a dropped curtain between this and "The 
Sequel." The villain merely shouted, "Bang!" — 
and instantly every member of the Happy Family 
dropped to the floor and expired without a struggle, 
though how such fearful carnage could be accom- 
plished with a single shot must forever remain one 
of the unsolved mysteries of Art. 

On and on we drove past the Old Yellow House, 
where a ministerial ancestor four generations back 
raised a numerous family, — relying more upon his 
agricultural than upon his j)astoral labors for sup- 
port, as he caustically informed his flock; past the 
great ash trees that he planted; down the long 
hill which always seemed so endless when we climbed 
it on our way to school, and so short when we played 

150 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

along the way as we went home; across the brook 
in the hollow where the first wild-flowers bloomed 
and up the hill on the other side, on top of which we 
could already see glimpses of the Old Red House, 
buried almost out of siorht behind the overarch ins: 
elms. Oh, how good it all is to come back to! To 
see the blue hills so changelessly beautiful in the 
distance, to hear the carriage wheels grind over the 
rocky road, to smell the well-remembered fragrance 
as we pass each familiar tree and shrub on the way! 
Here is the spot where the evening primrose blooms, 
and just at the expected moment we are welcomed 
by its sweet odor. On top of a birch tree in the 
sunlight a scarlet tanager sways and sings. Now 
we have passed the first bars on the left, and now 
we are on home land, and now at the top of the hill. 
See what a group! All the family stand there in 
silliouette, waving arms and handkerchiefs and 
shrilling the family salute, while old Gyp, the dog, 
gambols about with rheumatic grace, waving his 
tail and barking a welcome! And now we spring 
from the carriage into the midst of the group under 
the homestead trees, and run the gantlet of affection, 
— taking Fatlier and Mother, four sisters, two 
brothers iii-hiw, (l)ut just as good as the real), 
and the brother-in-law elect, in turn. Then follow 

151 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

in due course, three nieces, a nephew, one uncle, 
and a cousin, while last of all comes Norah — the 
Institution! 

Norah is the old retainer of the family, without 
whose somewhat intermittent service but unalterable 
affection these family reunions at Elmwood would 
be hedged about with insurmountable difficulties. 
She bears down upon us with a mighty Irish guffaw, 
her arms oustretched, her stout person listing to port 
with every heavy step like an ill-ballasted vessel, 
and engulfs us in an ample embrace. 

Poor old Norah! Without her familiar face, 
framed in its white cap gathered over her hair, and 
her capacious person leaning from the back window 
on a sunny afternoon, no summer picture of Elm- 
wood would be complete. How many afternoons 
I have spent on that lawn, with the sound of her 
afternoon recreation upon the jews' harp borne fit- 
fully upon the breeze, looking across the miles of 
intervening country to the faint outline of Nobscot 
and the blue hills of Milton in the azure distance, 
while I ate oxheart cherries brought from the nearest 
tree and steeped my soul in peace! 

How many times, too, I have been startled out of 
my reverie by the tinkling of cow bells and the bark- 
ing of Gyp, and have found myself suddenly sur- 

\5i 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

rounded by all the cows, taking the forbidden short 
cut across the lawn on their way to the barn to be 
milked! This is my signal for a walk to the hilltop 
beyond the orchard, where I watch the lengthening 
shadows, and the growing splendor in the west, and 
listen to the evensong of thrushes and vesper spar- 
rows, until Norah's summoning voice and the supper 
bell reach my ears, and I return to join the family 
around the table spread under the old elm trees. And 
now these familiar joys are beginning over again, 
and this time my Adam shares paradise with me! 

Ah, there 's the hoot of the owl in the elm tree, 
the same old owl that has watched there for years! 
You never hoot until the small hours, old friend, so 
I '11 close my vigil and go to sleep, thinking that all 
my nearest and dearest rest, an unbroken circle, 
under the old roof to-night, guarded and protected 
by the swaying branches of the elms of Elmwood. 



153 



CHAPTER XI 

WORK AND PLAY 

THIS morning I was awakened by that sweetest 
of country sounds, the music of cow bells, 
and sprang at once to the window to get the 
picture that I so love, of the cows going down the 
road to pasture. There were sixteen of them, with 
Gyp wagging along in the rear ready to give any 
hints that might seem necessary to those who 
strayed from the path after tempting mouthfuls of 
juicy grass, fresh with the morning dew. This 
pastoral procession wound toward the sunrise along 
a roadway bordered with living green, while across 
the lawn there appeared another procession, less 
pastoral but equally significant, for it foretold June 
peas for dinner. 

The five sisters, three brothers, and one elect have 
arrived at a simple system of family nomenclature. 
The men are of the adorable American type of 
husbands who pay absolute deference to their wives 
in all matters pertaining to what the world calls 
" woman's sphere" ; we have, therefore, appreciatively 
named them The Lambs — each being designated 
according to the date of his acquisition, as Lamb I, 

\5i 



WORK AND P L A Y 

Lamb II, Lamb III, and the brother-in-law elect 
is already known as Lamb IV. It is tlie privilege of 
each Lamb to assist his wife in such ways as are 
possible to the merely masculine, when she takes her 
place as caterer for the family. This office is filled 
in rotation by the sisters, and it is no sinecure. For 
this reason a delightful holiday feeling crept over me 
as I looked upon the housekeeper and her consort 
on their way to the garden to gather the vegetables 
for dinner, though I well know the task has its own 
compensations. When one is really out in the 
beautiful dew-washed world with all the freshness 
of the morning upon it, the task assumes a poetic 
quality, and one feels a wholesome scorn for the 
sleep-bound laggards in the house. When such 
duties are accomplished early, the day from break- 
fast on is free for less practical pursuits, and this 
morning the Lambs completed the work of laying out 
a golf course in the field beyond the orchard. As 
a finishing touch they tacked a score card to the 
trunk of an apple tree near the first hole, with all 
our initials, in order that our records may be pre- 
served and compared. 

For myself, I appreciate golf as a "full-sized game," 
as Lamb II, who is an architect, is wont to say, but 
I do not need to be coaxed out of doors to chase a 

155 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

little ball over the world. It seems such a meagre 
selection out of the beauties of the day to focus the 
vision upon a thirty-cent ball and lose the view of 
the Milton Hills on the horizon. And when it has 
fallen and disappeared, what a waste of time it seems 
to turn one's back upon the landscape to hunt for 
it among the weeds! It goes against my sense of 
relative values. I have a truly remarkable mental 
score of the game I played this afternoon. If re- 
corded it would read something like this: 

"... Spent three hours and a half on the golf 
grounds and did n't get round the links at all. After 
the first drive, lost my ball. Climbed over the wall 
into the pasture to hunt for it. Found the place 
was inhabited by a colony of brown thrashers, and 
rested a few minutes while I listened to their song. 
I have been told that the mavis belongs to this 
family. Must look this up for I 've always wanted 
to meet a mavis. Did not find the ball. 

" My Lamb called me and said I must return or 
resign. Called back to him to go on, that I was 
hunting my ball — which I immediately began to 
do. He offered to helj) me, but I declined with spirit 
and said I knew just where it had fallen and would 
find it myself. Found the brook running full, and 
a specimen of orchid growing near by. Took it 

156 



WORK AND TLA Y 

back to show to the Little Maid, who was perched in 
the apple tree near the teeing ground. Returned 
to hunt for the ball. Gave it up and took a new one. 
Had made my third hole and was on the point of a 
supreme effort, when the cows suddenly appeared 
from somewhere, headed straight for the sweet-corn 
patch in the garden. Ran to the rescue of the corn, 
which I tenderly love. Got out two cows with a 
lofter and a third with a brassy, which is a better 
score than I have made at any other time with 
these sticks. Then I went back to the second ball 
but could n't find it. It was n't there. Lamb II 
came back — also from the corn — to help me hunt 
it, and asked me guardedly if I liked croquet. Said 
he thought with a good partner I might make a suc- 
cess of it. 

" Then I said I thought working for a score 
demoralizing, and that I preferred to sit in the 
apple tree with the Little Maid; which I did." 

The true way to enjoy golf is by a vicarious pro- 
cess. It is very pleasant to sit in an apple tree and 
watch others, picturesquely disposed about an 
emerald field, working lianl to get little balls into 
little holes a great way oil"; but when one is down 
in the landscaj^e merely chasing the ball, the ell'ect 
of the whole is lost in an insignificaiil detail. 

157 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

"He who stands on Mt. Athos does not see Mt. 
Athos," and likewise he who plays golf cannot see 
the game. 

Then again, if one is actually playing, and some 
one else makes a splendid drive, the seeds of envy 
ripen at once in the soul; and if one is playing and 
makes a wretched play, there is a tendency to other 
sins. I have learned, I trust, not to lead myself into 
temptation. 

From the safe point of view of the apple tree one 
can feel a general benevolence toward all golfers. 
There one may enjoy a good play made anywhere in 
the field without the twinge which accompanies a 
spoiled record. Moreover it gives one a pleasing 
sense of virtue to enjoy the good plays of others in- 
stead of being in the midst of the melee, contending 
for a prize. There is so much competition in life 
that I am content to keep my pleasures on a social- 
istic basis of cooperation, even if in doing so I sacrifice 
all professional ambitions, and never am in the race 
for a championship. 

Each day is one long delight to the little children, 
for while the grown-up ones amuse themselves with 
their golf and other pursuits, the real children riot 
over the entire farm, playing in the brooks, sliding 
in the haymows, hunting eggs, and driving to mar- 

158 



WORK AND PLAY 

ket. This last occupation is raore arduous than it 
sounds, though Ehiiwood is only a mile from the vil- 
lage. Our horses are almost as remarkable for their 
method of progress as the boy in Cable's romance, over 
whom his discouraged teacher exclaimed, " With what 
rapiditive celeritude does he advance backwardly ! " 

There are two animals on this farm which have 
received the brevet rank of driving horses. One is 
named Jim, and the other Fanny, and they epitomize, 
respectively, all the assorted vices of their race and 
sex. If one wished to give the briefest possible 
resume of the points of a horse, all he would need to 
say to one acquainted with them would be, "every- 
thing that Jim and Fanny are not." 

Jim is a well-meaning animal — I will not call him 
a "dumb friend" — but he is stupid and lazy, and 
slower than the processes of justice. He is an 
equine loafer, with no respect for the lash, which, 
in feminine hands at least, he recognizes to be 
merely an empty symbol. Driving him is an ex- 
haustive process, for the experienced person is afraid 
to let him really cease moving for fear he will set — 
like cement — and never move again; and the slow- 
est rate of progress is achieved only at the expense 
of unceasing encouragement and duckings as con- 
stant as those of a brooding hen. 

1.59 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

We drive Jim until patience is exhausted and 
then turn to Fanny, not for rehef — we know better 
than to expect that — but for a counter-irritant, and 
in this capacity she excels a fly blister. Saints and 
sages are not proof against the extreme variety of 
her imbecilities. To look at her is in itself an 
exasperation — she is such a homely, rat-tailed, ill- 
tempered little brute. The rim of her eye, w^hich 
she rolls wickedly, is always red, and the normal 
position of her ears is at an obtuse angle with her 
head. In fact, all Fanny's angles are obtuse. She 
would not wear any other kind. The only time she 
ever wishes to go is when you wish her to stand 
still, and the only time she moves quickly is when 
she has an impulse to shy coquettishly at some 
object which she has seen daily from her long- 
vanished youth to the present time. To see Fanny 
put on the airs of a colt is a lesson to middle age. 

Iler method of progress is to crawl unwillingly 
all the way to town, stopping at every house unless 
urged to go on, until we finally reach the market, 
where we always stop, and there nothing will induce 
her to stand. While the caterer is within attending 
to the ordering, she plunges forward, then backs 
as suddenly; and if she happens to be tied she breaks 
the strap in this way. Once she got away and went 

IGO 



WORK AND PLAY 

home. Her fidgeting makes the task of getting 
back into tlie carriage a difficult one, and when the 
sliopper is at length established with all her parcels, 
and the driver says "Get up," Fanny immediately 
lays back her ears, humps her back, plants her four 
feet together, and clamps her rat-tail over one rein. 
This, of course, pulls it to one side, and for once she 
obligingly responds to a signal and climbs upon the 
curbstone. Then comes the humiliation of being 
rescued by the butcher's boy, a chubby child in a 
white apron, who leads the horse around with an air 
of superiority, as if the whole difficulty were due to 
inexperienced driving; and Fanny, to give color to 
the theory, behaves with lamb-like docility. 

Once pointed in the right direction, however, she 
loses all ambition and crawls along the homeward 
way with a sagging gait, as if she were ninety years 
old, with every disability known to veterinary wisdom. 
The whip accelerates her speed in up and down direc- 
tions only — never forward. 

Yesterday I drove her to town, and my wrongs are 
fresh in my memory; for she side-tracked in an un- 
guarded moment when I was talking with some one 
on the back seat, and when I looked around again, 
she had gone into one of the ancestral yards, and was 
in the act of getting down upon her knees to eat the 

ici 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

rich green grass, which she could not reach in any 
other way. 

If we pass a graveyard she has an impertinent 
habit of stopping for us to get out. Jim, on the other 
hand, has the rehgious tendency so often character- 
istic of resigned natures. He always turns in at the 
church, for he is more reconciled to waiting than to 
any other form of service, and he remembers that he 
stands still longer there than at any other stopping 
place. One Sunday morning when he had waited a 
reasonable length of time at the south door for the 
family to appear, he absent-mindedly went to church 
alone, turning in at the drive and finding his ac- 
customed place in the horse sheds, quite without 
guidance. 

Lamb I. drove Fanny to town a few days ago, 
and was jogging slowly down the long hill toward 
home, when he unwisely touched her with the whip. 
She responded so enthusiastically with her hind legs 
that the entire carriage box was loosed from its moor- 
ings and slid off, leaving the astonished driver sitting 
in it in the road, while Fanny made unprecedented 
time, with the four wheels rattling after her, up the 
next hill and home. 

Since Jim, Fanny, and the trolley car are our only 
means of transportation we make a virtue of neces- 



WORK AND PLAY 

sity and do most of our journeying on foot. There 
are many compensations in this way of getting about, 
for it permits one to seek fresh paths. To go to the 
village by a new way has in it an element of novelty 
and adventure which is full of charm. For one thing, 
there is always the entertaining possibility of losing 
oneself, and ever since I can remember I have longed 
to be safely lost in a forest — lost just long enough 
for the thrill without actual suffering. In crossing 
the fields and woods to town I have twice been near 
accomplishing this ambition, and have experienced 
that exhilaration which comes only with the summon- 
ing of one's powers to deal with an unusual situation. 

For an hour a few days ago, my Lamb and I were 
not only lost, but imprisoned in a wild tangle of inter- 
lacing grapevines and blackberry bushes which en- 
meshed the entire side of a steep and rocky ravine, 
and it took both patience and ingenuity to work our 
way out. ^^^len at last we came out it was upon an 
unfamiliar road at such a distance from town that 
we did not do our errand at all. 

This road was not reallv unfamiliar to us, but we 
had so firmly believed that we were in another locality 
that we did not recognize landmarks which we knew 
quite well. To start out in a definite direction and to 
follow it through fields and roads, and then suddenly 

1G3 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

to find oneself in an entirely different place from 
the one intended, provides a sensation not unlike that 
experienced in a first attempt at a somersault over the 
horizontal bar. Familiar things wear a strange and 
alien look, for the physical revolution is quicker than 
the mental one, and adjustment takes time. Habits 
are so arbitrary that it seems to be difficult to think 
in a reversed position, and it is equally difficult to 
realize where you are when you have your mind made 
up that you are somewhere else. 

After a few such experiences I found it better never 
to have too fixed notions at any time about my own 
location on the map. It is preconceived ideas of 
where one is that cause all the trouble. One can 
always get out of a difficulty and find one's way home, 
if one has no false pride, and no theory to maintain, 
and but one purpose — to get there. 

As a family we have a horrible tendency to mislay 
ourselves, and on such occasions we lose more time 
arguing over our whereabouts than it would take to 
get us home. We seldom go for a long drive that we 
do not get home by some unjDremcditated route, and 
usually by the time-honored device of allowing the 
horse to choose his own road. 

To be outclassed as a j)athfinder by a horse of Jim's 
mental calibre is humiliating, and his instinct for 



WORK AND PL A Y 

finding a steep, rocky, and perilous short-cut to the 
barn may be relied upon. After such a journey we 
get out the road maps and try to find out where we 
have been, with the result that each member of the 
family retires with a different conviction, with which 
she attempts to illumine the pathway of our next 
excursion. 

There are many roads about Elmwood, and when 
in a statistical mood it might be instructive to compute 
the possible combinations to be made in a drive of six 
to ten miles. This would forever set at rest the family 
superstition that we all know the region too well to be 
surprised into any unknown paths. 

As it is, we have reached one compromise. There 
is a blind overgrown road marked " Dangerous pass- 
ing," which no one seems able to fix definitely in 
mind, but which bears, along some portion of its 
tortuous way, the name of Pig Lane. We have struck 
this road so many times when we did not intend it, 
and did n't know where we were, that it has become 
the official explanation for any unpremeditated route, 
and is, in reality, a mere symbol for the intuitive meth- 
od. It has passed into a proverb at last, and when 
one of us reaches a conclusion by a mental process 
whose steps are not apparent, the Lambs are wont to 
say, "She got there by the way of Pig Lane." 

1G5 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

In an adventurous mood I have frequently said good- 
bye to the sun and plunged recklessly into the woods 
with a mind free from all effort to remember directions, 
points of the compass, or landmarks. It is a mood 
which gives delightful zest to a walk — a zest which 
safely may be indulged in this country, where there 
are no very great areas of unbroken forest. On such 
walks, either alone, or in that best kind of solitude 
which the Irishman described as being alone with 
one's sweetheart, come the finest revelations of our 
kinship with Nature. I wonder if the evolutionary 
doctrine interprets the feeling which we all have at 
times, of having all lower forms of life incorporated 
in our own ! 

On such walks I sometimes marvel at the temperate 
statement of the poet: "I feel two natures strug- 
gling within me." If I were called upon to estimate 
the number that struggle in me I should not reckon it 
at less than a dozen. In the midst of them somewhere 
am I, recognizing all of them, pitying some, trying 
to banish others, and enjoying myself mightily 
with a few of me. With such a variety of selves 
solitude of either sort becomes a social experience, 
for one can never foretell which or how many of 
one's natures are coming to the foreground of con- 
sciousness. 

166 



WORK AND PLAY 

I remember that Thoreau speaks of being differ- 
ently moved at different times in his contact with 
Nature, sometimes the spiritual man being uppermost, 
while at other times he would range the woods with all 
the instincts of a wild creature. Both these moods I 
know well and revel in. They seem to respond with 
some degree of certainty to different environments 
and suggest that there is in all animal life a subtle rela- 
tionship with the seasons and the changing year, of 
w^hich we become almost unconscious in our hothouse 
ways of growth and living. 

Yet even in the city, in the Spring there comes a 
vague elemental thrill, which I can only compare to 
the rising of sap in the trees and the renewal of life. 
"Then all herbs and trees renew a man or woman. " 

On a sunny hilltop in a June afternoon, when one 
sits gazing into the blue distance lost in wide-eyed 
meditation, there are moments when the spirit 
seems to belong in the ether — when one feels the 
wings! The body, heavy and cumbersome, seems 
to slip away from consciousness, and one can enter 
into the experience of the dragon fly, bursting its shell 
to find its home in a different element. 

In these transfigurations one touches the heights 
of consciousness and feels identified with the great 
First Cause, rather than with the flesh of the body. 



167 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and the spirit is steeped in a pure joy. At other times 
the animal self is paramount, and this self responds 
to the environment of the forest, and to activity rather 
than to contemplation. Then one vibrates with the 
physical life of Nature, and becomes a part of the 
very earth and trees ; speculation vanishes ; contem- 
plation, conscience, duty — all slough away like artifi- 
cial trappings, and a pure joy of sense swallows up all 
lesser degrees of consciousness. The wild tide of life 
sweeps into full pulsation, the instincts reassert them- 
selves; watchfulness, the sure impulse of self- 
protection, and a sense of physical powers which 
one has never possessed, brought from some sub- 
conscious depth, flash into reality. 

Then it seems quite possible to run on all-fours 
through forest and brake with the swift-footed fox, or 
to rise on whirring wings with the partridge just 
frightened from one's path; and one feels a vague 
surprise that the creatures should run away from one 
so like themselves. 

Human life, houses, cities, become alien and remote, 
and life seems to belong to the forest and field, free 
from the perversions and distortions wrought by those 
acquisitions of the soul of man — vices and virtues. 
From such dcptlis of forest even virtues wear a foreign 
and hostile air, as if they had no part in the unmoral 

108 



WORK AND PLAY 

but wholly good course of Nature. The natural world 
seems to run smoothly enough without them. 

Virtue and vice belong alike to that sphere of choice 
foisted upon primal innocence by the advent of knowl- 
edge, truly enough. How strange the Fall of Man 
looks from the forest, as if one had got around to the 
animals' point of view in the matter, and saw the full 
significance of expulsion from innocence into the field 
of conscious endeavor! 

I can imagine the animals having their own opinion 
of the situation when they were called before Adam 
to be christened; perhaps they felt that he paid a 
heavy price for the privilege of " accomplishments and 
sins." At any rate I know that at times it is a great 
rest for his descendants to take a vacation from beset- 
ting virtues and vices in either the realm of Nature or 
of spirit — either below or above the stratum of 
struggle and endeavor. The dangers of the wild life 
are few and harmless beside the perils that beset the 
immortal soul in the early stages of its climb, and the 
incessant nagging of that tireless guardian, the con- 
science, forms a cheerless accompaniment all the way. 

We cannot always dwell on the mountaintop of 
spiritual vision, and I confess to an occasional longing 
for a brief respite in a faun-like life, just for a breath- 
ing spell on the inevitable upward journey. 

1G9 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

Sometimes when wandering over hill and dale, 
driven only by the winds of fancy, one may enter this 
midworld between flesh and spirit, and live for an 
hour the life of fairies and pixies and all the spirits 
which inhabit the realms of myth and wonder tale. 
Then, to dance by moonlight on hilltops, and to ride 
upon the wings of the wind, giving full play to all elf- 
like impulses, seem possible delights. 

The fairies and sprites are surely within us, or they 
would not be in literature, and sometimes I take a 
walk with the one who lives in me. Then it seems a 
pure joke that any one seeing me should think me 
the staid and proper person which I fear I look. It 
is only a masquerade — one of the swift disguises 
possible to fairies and witches! In reality "I am a 
spirit of no common rate" flying over hill and meadow 
with the skimming motion of the swallow, and tasting 
the delights of every creature. 

How astonishing — not to say alarming — it would 
be to my nearest and dearest if sometimes my exterior 
semblance were to take on the hues of imagination! 
The Little Maid quite understands it. Sometimes we 
lie down together upon some orchard slope and with 
our faces close to Mother Earth peer into the rich 
grasses and lose ourselves in the World of Littles. 
The unwieldly length of body and limb is out of sight 

170 



WORK AND PLAY 

and forgotten, and we live for a time with the crickets 
and the ants, watching their pursuits with the sym- 
pathetic interest of an inhabitant of their own world. 
The grasses loom into a great thicket — a jungle 
inhabited by many kinds of creatures, and to walk 
through its mazes fills the minified consciousness with 
a delightsome awe. 

It is our experience that a healthy body may some- 
times be forgotten and put aside as too cumbersome 
luggage for such a journey, but that when dinnertime 
conies it reasserts its claims and drags us back to the 
world of common things by an insistent contrivance 
called the Pangs of Hunger. We may be able to 
lose ourselves temporarily in Fairy Land, but these 
dreadful, searching unavoidable Pangs of Hunger 
find us out as certainly as a guilty conscience, or even 
more certainly. And when they do — the grassy 
slope is no longer a dense forest, peopled by fairies 
and other winged creatures, but a small space which 
intervenes between us and the dinner table; and over 
it we hasten, hand in hand, to the gay music of the 
dinner bell. 



171 



CHAPTER XII 

A DAY IN ARCADY 

I AM sure that Elmwood Farm is not to be found 
on the map. It belongs in the same landscape 
with the sheepfold of Celia and Rosalind, and 
the Forest of Arden. Not only have clouds and sky, 
twilight and evening star, and all the setting of nature 
contributed to the illusion, but ourselves and our pas- 
times have been truly Shakespearean to-day. It has 
been an idyl from beginning to end — a day to reas- 
sure one as to the beneficence of all the issues of life, 
and the uselessness of our indoor fears. We have 
lived under the pleasant sky from early morning until 
the waning moon warned us that it was time for bed, 
and even now I hesitate to blow out my candle and 
turn the leaf of night between the illumined pages of 
to-day and to-morrow. It began in the garden, where 
my Adam and I gathered vegetables and fruits for 
the refreshment of guests from the city who were 
expected to spend the day, for this week I am 
experiencing what Whitman would call the house- 
keeper's joys. 

The garden was all ashine witli the morning dew, 
and the glistening drops showered over our hands as 



A DAY IN ARCADY 

we gathered crisp lettuce and cucumbers for the salad, 
and green peas enough to feed a regiment, by the 
reckoning of our backs, and then went to the front 
porch to shell them. 

The most poetic duty of all housework is shelling 
peas under a vine-clad porch, and I always rejoice 
when this task falls to my lot. If one is alone it 
permits the imagination perfect liberty and at the 
same time acquits the hands of idleness. Meditation 
is my pet intellectual dissipation, but a haunting rec- 
ollection of the Adversary who always seeks employ- 
ment for idle hands, makes free indulgence in it a 
matter to be adjusted with conscience. I do not 
make tatting, and when I sew the work demands my 
concentrated powers and a little more; and knitting 
and crocheting are both occupations which I scorn. 
Cooking, however, is a congenial pursuit. It is the 
most creative of all the household occupations. It de- 
mands judgment, skill, and gastronomic imagina- 
tion, and when I am engaged in any of its processes I 
feel a comfortable self-respect. 

" When I cook I do not merely get a meal — I pre- 
pare refreshment for my beloved," Lady Somebody 
said; and I agree with her that womankind in general 
has taken altogether too sordid a view of this necessary 
task. Since cooking nmst be done constantly, I am 

173 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

glad that there is in the nature of the work itself an 
element of variety which must always keep it in the 
ranks of the skilled industries. To shell peas in soli- 
tude is therefore sweet, but to shell them when one's 
beloved assists in the operation apotheosizes it. 
There is but one trouble with this arrangement, and 
that is that the task lasts but half the time when two 
engage in it; and so I sent my willing Lamb for 
Emerson's Essay on Farming, and he read aloud to 
an accompaniment of morning bird songs, while I 
shelled peas in a state of complete content. 

Norah rang the breakfast bell just as we finished 
the last pod and paragraph, and when the pan of pretty 
green balls had been put away in the refrigerator, 
we felt that we had made an excellent beginning 
to the day. After breakfast, while the sun was still 
low and the shadows were long, we went to the spring 
for water for the table, for in Arcady one drinks 
only from running springs. Our spring is half a mile 
from home, and the way thither lies through a rocky 
pasture with only a winding cart-path for a road. 

My Lamb and I drove through this field, between 
wild hedges of barberry, blueberry, and bayberry 
bushes, stopping occasionally to refresh ourselves 
with a long, long look at the distant hills, until we 
passed through a pair of bars into a still jnore rocky 

174 



A DAY IN ARCADY 

field beyond. Here the road disappears, and the land 
slopes suddenly toward a little wood. The spring is 
not visible from any point near it, but at the edge of 
the wood it announces itself by a faint rippling sound 
which makes itself heard like a running accompani- 
ment to the bird songs all about. Here we left Jim 
to solitary meditation and his favorite pursuit of stand- 
ing still, took our water cans and pitchers, and, happy 
in our pastoral service, plunged into the little wood. 

It was like stepping from broad sunshine into the 
quiet coolness of an empty church, with a hidden 
organist playing little vagrant trills and snatches of 
melody upon the upper keyboard of the organ. The 
thick branches made a bower above the spring, and 
from its source the water danced away down the 
rocky ravine, lighted here and there to diamond 
brightness by flecks of sunshine sifted through the 
tangled maze of green. 

"Here I raise my Ebenezer, " I said, and with 
deliberate disregard of duty sat down upon the rock 
above the spring. 

"Don't you think it's rather selfish of us to go on 
this errand when it would make such a beautiful in- 
cident for the bride and groom to remember of their 
bridal summer.^" Adam asked, as he sat down be- 
side me, "and they have n't many more days left." 

175 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

"We '11 let them go some of the time," I said, "but 
just now I 'm not worrying about any form of altruism 
whatever. One of the worst things about our family 
is its pernicious habit of self-sacrifice. If we plan a 
drive each individual insists on staying at home 
to allow the others to go, and when at last some 
are reluctantly made to go, conscience harasses them 
all the way because they are enjoying a pleasure 
that all the rest cannot share. Was n't it Mark 
Tapley who said, 'A good out and out mean family 
would open a field of action as I might do some- 
thing in. I must hope for the worst!' Our family 
makes itself miserable with misplaced consideration, 
and I mean to set them a good example of selfish- 
ness. " 

Supported by this sophistry we deliberately played 
by the way, sending fleets of green leaves down the 
stream, paddling in the shallows, and building dams 
like two small children, until Adam had a second 
attack of conscience. 

"This is scandelicious," he said, coining a word; 
"when we get home we shall find everybody going 
about with parched throats and protruding tongues, 
crying for water; and it will be time to go to meet our 
guests, and the errands must be done before that, 
and you know very well that Jim has u't the speed of 

17G 



A DAY IN A R C A D Y 

a sawhorse. " Reluctantly I acquiesced, and very 
reluctantly we turned toward home. 

We found Fanny in harness when we got there, for 
two carriages were needed to bring home our guests 
and the provisions for the day, and we set forth at the 
reckless speed of a funeral procession, Adam driving 
Jim, and I Fanny. Both horses were in their most 
deliberate moods, and we resigned ourselves to the 
journey as to an ocean voyage, occasionally enlivening 
the tedium of the way by laying wagers as to which 
horse would get there last. 

The tedious process of getting one's order filled in a 
country grocery, though not a Shakespearean occupa- 
tion, had its place in our day. There was a time 
when I used to try by observation to discover how the 
clerks managed to consume so much time at it, but 
experience soon taught me to give that up. Their 
movements were like the slow progress of the seasons, 
and as impossible to accelerate. 

Just as the sower puts seed in the ground and trusts 
to the deliberate processes of nature to bring about a 
crop, so I entrusted my list to the grocer and awaited 
our supplies without being able to detect any steps in 
the accomplishment of our purpose. "In due time 
we shall reap if we faint not, " I said over my shoulder, 
at last, to Adam, whose carriage was standing just 

177 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

behind. There was no answer. I looked around 
and there he sat with his head resting against the side 
of the carriage, peacefully sleeping, with Jim in a 
somnolent attitude, his ears drooping, and his left 
hind leg crooked to complete the picture. 

We got our parcels just in time to reach the drinking 
fountain and to greet our guests as they alighted at 
the trysting place. Adam invited the Editor to ride 
with him, while I made room for our dear friends, 
the white-haired German professor and his wife, since 
I had the two-seated carriage. 

It is the family custom to distract the attention of 
guests as much as possible from our horses by point- 
ing out the beauty of the views, with the appearance 
of making an effort to give them plenty of time in 
which to enjoy them. 

All such devices were rendered quite impossible for 
me, however, by the chivalrous determination on the 
part of the Professor to drive. In vain I told him 
that I was accustomed to Fanny and that she was 
peculiar in disposition. He placed me on the back 
seat, with gentle courtesy, saying to me, "Get in, get 
in, my child"; and then to Fanny as he seated him- 
self and shook the reins, "Get up." 

As I feared, she got up. At least, she got up at 
one end — that near€\st the carriage — with such 

178 



A DAY IN ARCADY 

energy that she nearly came over the dashboard into 
his lap. Feeling a new hand, and a gentle one, upon 
the reins Fanny planned to give the driver a surprise, 
so she snorted fiercely to call his attention, laid her 
ears back, kicked up her heels, and came down with 
her tail clamped over the reins. In vain the Professor 
pulled and manoeuvred. The tail apparently was 
fastened with a spring lock and Fanny alone knew 
the combination. We were like a ship in mid ocean 
w^ith disabled steering gear, and there was nothing to 
hinder her going where she pleased. This she pro- 
ceeded to do, going off in a sort of cake walk to one 
side of the road in pretended fright at a stone lying in 
the gutter. Then she stood still and craned her neck 
over the stone w^all after some green leaves hanging 
just beyond her reach. 

"I '11 have to give her a little advice before she tries 
to climb a tree," I said; "she's perfectly capable of 
it"; and I got out of the carriage, seized her by the 
bridle, and dragged her back into the road, giving her 
meanwhile mental treatment of a kind not found in 
any text-book on the subject. I climbed back into the 
carriage, and after clucking a few moments apparently 
without result, like an automobile before it starts, 
she had an impulse to move; then, hearing Jim 
behind her, she resolved to get into the yard first for 

179 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

the "honor of her sex. So at last we reached home 
and found the family assembled under the elm trees 
waiting to greet us. 

The long table was spread, the sunshine flecking 
it with dancing spots of gold, as the green boughs 
waved above us in the breeze ; and the guests would 
have been worthy of seats at the board of the banished 
Duke himself where only choice spirits assembled. 

The Professor and the Professorinn beamed with 
gentle benignity upon the company from the seat of 
honor at the head of the board, and the Editor made 
his grace before meat by catching the youngest baby 
and riding her about the lawn on his shoulders, 
while the other children made a procession behind 
him clinging to his coat tails. 

Norah had outdone herself in preparing the dinner, 
for our guests were all old-time favorites with her too. 
It is wonderful how the flavor of peas is improved by 
picking them yourself, and all the poetry of the morn- 
ing seemed to be preserved in those we had to-day. 

The Professorinn exclaimed over them, and I told 
her solemnly that they had been gathered by true 
lovers in a garden, in the rose-colored dawn, and 
cooked ill honey dew, for the perfection of a charm; 
and she said they tasted like peas of paradise. 

We had no need of wine, for tlie clear air and good 

ISO 



A DAY IN A R C A D Y 

spirits were exhilarating enough without it, and our 
dessert was a gift direct from Nature. It consisted 
of beautiful cherry branches, laden with deep red 
oxhearts, fresh from the tree. 

The Japanese have their feast of cherries in their 
blossoming time. Our appreciation of them in their 
fruitage was perhaps more carnal, but equally enthu- 
siastic ; for they please every sense, and the deep red 
fruit is as delightful to the eye as to the palate. It 
was therefore both artistic and epicurean delight that 
caused the Editor to skip like a boy, as he rose from 
the table, and taking my hand, to lead the way in an 
impromptu dance, down the driveway to the trees. 

I called to the others over my shoulder to follow, and 
they came in a gay procession, hand in hand as for a 
minuet, dancing after us in the sunshine, — the white- 
haired Professor and his beautiful wife in the lead, 
with Father and Mother, brothers and sisters, the 
babies and Gyp, all dancing in their wake. 

At the trees we saluted partners and swarmed up 
ladders and over stone walls, those above throwing 
down branches to those below, and all feasting until 
our lips rivalled the color of the lips of ladies in Eliza- 
bethan poetry. 

Then we wandered on down the lane, witli ap|)le 
boughs hanging over the walls on either side mid the 

181 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

musical cow-bells tinkling in the distance, and came 
at the end of it upon pasture land with a lovely 
view of far-away hills, their deep blue outlines drawn 
against a cloudless sky. 

The New England hill pasture! What a land of 
dreams it is — where the very air seems to sleep in the 
sunshine, and even the bees buzz drowsily as they 
visit the white clover among the grasses ! 

To-day the air was filled with the sweetness of 
aromatic shrubs, of sweet fern and sassafras, of bay- 
berry and brake. Here and there across the slopes 
we saw beautiful white sprays of the stately queen of 
the meadows, and white and pink spiraeas bloomed 
everywhere against backgrounds of old stone walls 
and hedgerows of the wild rose. 

The cawing of crows is a characteristic sound which 
belongs with the pasture as truly as the music of the 
cow-bells, and in spite of my prejudices I should miss 
them if they were left out of any rural landscape. To- 
day they filled their place well in the drama of nature, 
and far away to the north we saw two buzzards, 
sailing "on sleeping wings," in wonderful circles over 
the woods. 

There is something peculiar about crows and buz- 
zards. Among the creatures of the air they bear the 
relation to singing birds that the old witch woman 

182 



A DAY IN A R C A D Y 

bears to the lovely young girl in fairy tales. There is 
always something sinister about them — their very 
attitudes have an evil and tragic suggestion. It must 
be an inner sense of the unity of things — of the sym- 
bolisms of nature — that produces those strange 
associations and emotions of childhood, for they 
cling to one through life. In her use of black, cheer- 
ful Nature is so sparing that a touch of it in the 
landscape makes a profound impression. 

To walk alone in the pastures is always to me like 
opening a garden gate and slipping through it into my 
own little past — to feel again the mystery of Nature 
with the solemn joy of childhood. 

To walk there with friends is another kind of pleas- 
ure, like being in two worlds at once. That dear old 
child, the Professor, walked with me to-day, and we 
talked of such things. He told me that the hilltop 
was the place of age, serene and contemplative, where 
one may look back over the way he has come, and see 
all the experiences of life spread out before him in 
their relative places and values. And I told him that 
the forest was the place of youth, with the path hid- 
den and to be found, and with the necessity upon one 
for going on, even if the way should be uncertain; 
and then we both laughed and said how wonderful it 
was to have the trite similes of the poets made vital 

183 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and real by an intense realization of the feeling which 
prompted them to expression. Thus the whole world 
is made new, and the oldest comparison is like a 
newly discovered truth ! 

Once as we were driving I spoke to Cousin Hen- 
rietta out of a reverie and said, "Did you ever really 
feel how like youth is to May?" And she laughed 
mischievously and said, "It seems to me I have heard 
something of that sort before." And I woke up, 
came around to her point of view, and laughed at my 
perception of a likeness which has affected the mind of 
man since the beginning of time, and which had 
come upon me at that moment with a freshness of 
realization which removed it from a historical fact to 
a vital experience. I suppose the psychologist would 
say I had got the same old fact lodged in a new apper- 
ceptive centre. 

The Professor is a delightful companion on a walk : 
he has the faculty of falling into the same apperceptive 
centre with spontaneous cordiality, and understands 
one's short-cuts through the emotions. 

I told him to-day how the sight of buzzards sailing 
in huge circles affects me, and the feeling caused by 
three trees against the sky, and how sweet it was to 
remember my childhood as I did in walking over these 
dear old hills. And he said, "Yes, dear child, it is 

18t 



A DAY IN ARCADY 

all so, no doubt; but you are yet too young to enjoy 
all the pleasures of memory which help to make life's 
latest sands its golden ones. I have now the ha})piest 
years of my life — the golden harvest years — ' the 
last of life, for which the first was made.' * Do not fear 
to grow old, for truly for you the best is yet to be.' " 
And his eyes followed his wife, more beautiful in her 
white hair than any young girl, as she walked ahead 
of us over the brow of the hill, with the free step of 
youth. 

On the top of this hill is a rock which commands a 
view of the blue rim of the world, and this rock is my 
own particular fortress and city of refuge, botli in times 
of trouble and of joy. There I have fought many a 
hard battle with that intimate enem.y, myself; and 
there I have dreed my weird at other times, when other 
moods were upon me. Thither I used to march some- 
times in windy February weather, taking a fierce joy 
in braving the cold and fighting it out witli the ele- 
ments; and thither I have fled to read letters — which 
shall never, never be made into tapers; and thither 
on pleasant days I have walked with friends, and we 
have talked, as one talks under the sky, of all the real 
things of life. It is a trysting place for me and my 
thoughts and my friends, and so it seemed natural 
that we should wander in the familiar direction to-day 

185 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

— all of us — and sit down together upon the rock 
and the bare hilltop. 

The children immediately sought the neighboring 
thicket of young birch trees, and bending them down 
swung ecstatically from their tops. 

"I haven't done that since I was a boy," said the 
Editor, and he joined the children. 

" I am still a boy," said the Professor, and he also 
went; the Lambs went, "to bend down the trees for 
the others"; and there were other good reasons left for 
the rest of us ; and soon old and young were dancing 
up and down with a delightful feeling of levity, akin 
to the floating sensation one experiences in dreams. 

Later, as we sat under the trees on the lawn, the 
Professor and his wife told us of their winter in Italy 
and the Orient; and we listening read between the 
lines the secret of their perennial youth in the fresh- 
ness and sweetness of their devotion to each other, and 
in the perfection they had attained in the great art 
of living. 

Each day, as they described it, glowed with the color 
imparted by the cultivated imagination, which turns 
the prose of life into poetry. No day finds them at the 
mercy of events, but all the small incidents of life are 
by their skill made into a rich and beautiful mosaic 
of experience. To think of them is inspiration, and 

186 




Sill-; SAID, "NN'llAI IXt \<>l S\\ in "XM ANIi Ml t , I : T II N 

M \i;i;i r.i> r 



A DAY IN A R C A D Y 

to be with them is delight. They belong indeed in 
Arden, for they are among the few people in the real 
world who, like Rosalind and Celia, can transform 
exile into a holiday, and defeat adversity by using it as 
opportunity. 

The Bride-elect and her lover looked into each 
other's eyes and smiled with a happy confidence that 
the later chapters of their love story would be like 
this also, and I felt a hand searching for mine, and the 
other married lovers in the group gazed proudly upon 
their children and upon each other in a general atmos- 
phere of family felicity. 

Even Norah from her window caught the infection, 
for later, as I approached the kitchen door to confer 
with her about breakfast, I heard her address the hired 
man — a human wreck answering to the name of 
Dan — in accents of unmistakable sentiment. 

" Dan, " she said, as she placed a well-filled plate of 
beans before him, "what do you say to you and me 
gettin' married.^" 

" No, you don't," said Dan hastily, " not by a blamed 
sight," and heavy silence fell upon the kitchen. 

Our supper table might have belonged to the Duke 
himself, for it was out of doors, under the trees, and in 
two directions no house was visible — only the trees 
and the distant lines of hills. 

187 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

The sun sank over the western brink of the world 
in a glory of scarlet and gold, and the full moon rose 
in feminine splendor in the east, so that both sides of 
our table were provided with celestial spectacles ; and 
the children added a third illumination by lighting a 
fire in the roadway near the table as the twilight deep- 
ened. There they toasted marshmallows after the 
dessert, which, in deference to our location in the great 
pie belt, was cherry pie. 

When the moon was high enough so that the whole 
earth lay under the spell of her mystic light, we es- 
corted our visitors once more to the village fountain, 
and then from the hilltop watched the sparkle of its 
lights as their wonderful chariot, propelled by a 
spark, wound over the hills carrying them back again 
into the world of things. 



188 



CHAPTER XIII 

A MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE 

THESE are busy days for tlie Bride-elect, and 
days of somewhat modified rapture to the 
Bridegroom, for he is having the chastening 
experience of being introduced to his prospective 
things-in-law, and the ordeal, to a modest man, is not 
a happy one. Whether all the world loves a lover or 
not, all the world is certainly curious about him, and 
we have striven to assist Lamb IV to a quick achieve- 
ment of the approbation he deserves. 

When one dwells among one's kindred all one's an- 
tecedents are of importance, and the examination as 
to eligibility extends backward into the family history 
of the candidate; and since it is impossible to change 
one's ancestry after it has become known, we have 
striven in all imperceptible ways to have it understood 
that the forebears of our new brother are all that could 
be demanded even in a New England village. His 
Pilgrim ancestors were among those who "caught the 
first boat," as Mr. Dooley says, and though he is a 
Western man, he is entitled to the proud distinction of 
■'Eastern extraction." 

To be an extraction has always seemed to mo a somc- 

189 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

what doubtful blessing, but to the New England mind 
it is the only compromise between the elect state of 
a born-and-bred Yankee, and the outer darkness of 
being indigenous to less worthy soil. 

The Bride-elect, it must be confessed, takes a mis- 
chievous satisfaction in the psychological moments 
w^hich are the present portion of the Bridegroom, 
knowing well that she is destined to similar ones when 
she is introduced to his relations and friends. 

Their first appearance together is a sweet agony 
never to be forgotton by any married pair. On the 
day when my Adam took me for the first time to the 
church where he had been brought up, and ushered 
me into the family pew, a dear old lady leaned forward 
from the pew back of us before the service began, 
patted me on the shoulder in a motherly way and 
whispered, " I know who you are, and I 'm real glad to 
see you. I 've known your husband ever since he was 
a little boy, and I hope you 're good enough for him. 
He deserves a good wife." Then she settled back 
and said in an audible whisper to her next neighbor: 
"What do you think of her looks .^ I was n't led to 
expect much. I believe I 'm favorably disappointed 
on the whole." 

After this it was difficult to sit in front of her and fix 
my eyes on the minister and my thoughts on the ser- 

190 



MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE 

mon; but I soothed my embarrassment l)y reflecting 
that there are advantages In not being called upon to 
live up to too perfect an exterior. 

It is not successful, outside of novels, for character 
and appearance to be out of harmony with each other. 
If the person be beautiful and the character dis- 
agreeable, the observer feels, when he discovers the 
real state of affairs, that his admiration has been 
obtained under false pretences, for, word it as we 
may, we always and instinctively look upon beauty 
as the outward symbol of inner perfection; and those 
of us who are still several laps behind a perfect ideal 
in character may thank a kind fate for not saddling 
us with a physical beauty impossible to live up to. 

Luckily for bridegrooms, nobody demands that 
they shall be beautiful. A certain strong and uncom- 
promising plainness is indeed abnost an advantage; 
and this fact makes the fairy prince the most dif- 
ficult figure in fiction. His perfections are almost 
wearisome; but this is a theoretical disadvantage from 
which real men seldom suffer. 

There has been such a premium upon physical 
beauty in women — such an undeviating demand for it 
since the beginning, that it would seem as if the opera- 
tion of evolutionary law should by this time have 
succeeded in establishing beautv as the birthrifj^ht of 

191 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

every girl. The facts are against the theory, as they 
so often are, and we must content ourselves in this in- 
complete world with alloyed beauty to correspond 
with our alloyed virtues, or else recognize a spiritual 
instead of a physical standard. 

Children invariably look for and expect to find ulti- 
mately — in somebody — the perfect incarnation of 
the beauty about which they dream. It is only when 
life, has shattered faith in the existence of that perfect 
ideal anywhere on earth, that we begin to realize and 
appreciate the measure of beauty that is all about us ; 
and that is one of the reasons why I can say with 
George Eliot that the real outcome of life is better 
than my childish dreams. 

It takes one a long time to get to the point of not 
demanding too much, and the way thither is marked 
by the wreck of many an illusion. We are born with 
the vision of the perfect, and suffer long because 
of the grief of the actual. At length we arrive at a 
juster estimate of the present position of the human 
race in the scale of being, and are content to wait a 
little longer for the manifestation of the sons of God. 

Tlie way is smoothed for children by the trans- 
forming power of the imagination, which gilds the 
actual with the hues of the ideal. I knew once a 
freckle-faced, pudgy, snub-nosed little Iloosier girl, 

]!)'2 



M E D I T A T 1 O X () X M A R U 1 A (} E 

whose (leliglit it was to tie on a gingham apron, 
wrong side before, for a train, turn up her tow hair 
and fasten it with a hairpin, and place a brass ring 
u})on the forefinger of her right hand. Then she 
would secure a goblet of thick glass from her 
mother's pantry, and, standing barefooted upon the 
stoop of their log house, read from the school reader 
the story of that beautiful bride who electrified the 
wedding guests by discovering an imaginary serpent 
in her glass of wine, converting them all to lives of 
total abstinence on the spot. I can see her rapt ex- 
pression now, as she took careful aim with her stubby 
forefinger at the goblet and declaimed: "Pointing 
her jewelled finger at the glass!" 

What I saw and what she saw were so very different ! 
She was about twelve at the time, and I was possibly 
a little younger. She, at any rate, felt a degree 
of superiority, and told me in confidence about 
numerous admirers who were suffering on her account. 
I had no similar experiences to offer, and was stung 
to the point of insinuating that possibly these youths 
had an eye to her father's money ! 

So the drama begins almost in the cradl(\ .tiid goes 
on to the very end; it is quite impossible to say w lien 
we are either too old or too young to feel the infiuence 
of romance, and equally impossih](^ to decide how 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

much of the time we act a part, even to ourselves. 
This blessed imagination bridges the gulf between 
the actual and ideal, and gives us the vision of the 
destination which makes the actual so significant 
and worth while. If I were a poet I should dedicate 
my pen to its praise. To it we owe all progress, all 
piercing of the veil of flesh to find the deeper realities 
beyond. It dignifies duty and makes it more attract- 
ive, it soothes sorrow, and finds the way through all 
the difficult passes of experience. 

AMien the Bride-elect was a little girl she depended 
upon this immaterial assistance to help her through 
trying duties. When her room was left as it should 
not have been, and she was sent to put it to rights, 
she assisted rebellious nature by sitting down first 
with slate and pencil to write a story about it, begin- 
ning, "Little Helen's room was in great disorder." 
Then she rose and acted the part of a bustling house- 
wife quite happily, making a drama of a disagreeable 
necessity. 

I have tried to impress these psychological prin- 
ciples upon the Bridegroom, and have encouraged 
him to play his role with zest, and he has risen to the 
occasion with a spirit which has thus far won him 
golden opinions. The ordeal will soon be over now, 
for the wedding is to be day after to-morrow. The 

194 



MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE 

invitations have been out for a week or more, and we 
are in the full tide of preparation. 

Ours is a loyal family; in carrying through any 
event of importance we are each sure of the interested 
cooperation of all the others, and the fitness of differ- 
ent members for special functions is determined by 
the process of natural selection. 

Those who are equal to certain tasks are sure to 
find opportunity to use their talents, and those who 
show special unfitness are thrown aside with as little 
ceremony as is shown in the orderly processes of 
nature. So it happens that by virtue of a general 
unfitness for useful occupations, I am appointed to 
do the worrying. If one of the babies eats a green 
apple or gets into the neighborhood of poison ivy, I 
forecast the probable result and give a proportionate 
amount of concern to the matter. 

Worrying is something of an art when conscien- 
tiously pursued. It involves a dragon-like watch- 
fulness over events lest some misfortune take us 
unawares. I do not know just why we should be so 
anxious to taste misery before it really comes, and 
spend our lives, as so many of us do, "in the midst of 
terrible tragedies, most of which never happen." It 
seems a small privilege to accord to Fate, to let her 
surprise us with sorrows, when by foreseeing them 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

we make ourselves twice wretched; but since so the 
world wags, the office of a professional worrier is no 
sinecure. 

Personally, I have the greatest admiration for those 
who accept life — "the pot luck of the day" — with 
philosophy, good temper, and positive faith ; and very 
little use for that kind of resignation which is but a 
form of inertia. It is so easy to confound feebleness 
of will with piety, in accepting the trials that come to 
us. When soldiers can advance to battle and sudden 
death to the sound of gay music, surely we ought to 
be able to meet the common lot with composure. 

However, since worrying is tribute exacted by the 
conscientious, I am a willing scapegoat for the family 
anxieties; just now I am engaged to forecast the 
weather possibilities, and speculate on what we shall 
do if it rains on the wedding day. 

The grass has been carefully cut, all the farm im- 
plements have been put away, and even the cows 
wear an unusual aspect of sleekness and expectancy. 
Jim and Fanny have had their harnesses newly done 
over, and the carriages are in immaculate order, 
while the house has been swept and "garnisheed," as 
the Little Maid asserts with pride, from garret to 
cellar. Wedding gifts arrive each day, to be opened 
by the Bride-elect and viewed with deliglited approval 

19G 



MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE 

by the members of the family. There are people, I 
know, who take an exalted view of the custom of 
giving wedding presents, and feel that it is not always 
free from an element of calculation from which such 
a solemn transaction should be exempt, but for my 
part I confess to a weakness for it. 

The friends are by this means allowed a share in 
the event which mere attendance upon a ceremony 
could not give ; and it is pleasant to feel that you have 
helped to complete the happiness of two persons, and 
in the establishment of a new home upon this hoary 
old earth. 

I knew a man once who said that he saw no fitness 
in making such a fuss about a marriage ceremony, 
" since it was a transaction which one might enter into 
a number of times during a lifetime." It was not an 
absolutely unique experience, he argued, and to treat 
it as such an extremely pivotal occasion seemed dis- 
proportionate emphasis. 

I spoke of this the other day to a grand-aunt, as we 
were discussing our simple preparations, and had my 
reward in the look of frozen horror with whicli she 
listened to this alarming point of view. 

"I've heard a great deal about Chicago laxity," 
she said with severity, "but that goes })eyon(l any- 
thing I ever heard of. Do you actually calculate 

197 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

on separations out there before the marriage takes 
place?" 

"Why, Aunt," I said, reassuringly, "I suppose he 
thought of it as only a safe consideration of future 
possibilities, like getting his life insured. I don't 
indorse it. I think it 's wrong not to have weddings 
and invite your friends every time, and I do not ap- 
prove of having divorce coupons on your marriage 
certificate at all. You must not believe — " 

But I got no further; and it took another member 
of the family some time to convince her that the 
coupon idea was fiction which had been offered in a 
spirit of pleasantry. 

Since that ill-starred conversation, I have been in 
disgrace, and am regarded as a person of dangerous 
social tendencies. 

The felicity of the Bride-elect was not to be dis- 
turbed, even by the arrival of Norah's gift, which was 
opened in the presence of a suffocating family and of 
Norah herself. The situation was one to tax the 
powers of a diplomat; for Norah liad been bent on a 
surprise for "Trouble-de-house," which is her pet 
name for the Bride-elect, and she achieved it. Her 
gift was a bouncing sofa cushion covered with white 
satin, upon which was painted, in a sanguinary com- 
bination of colors, an Indian head, decorated with 

198 



MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE 

war-paint and feathers. " I lieard ye was goin' to 
have yur weddin' ring carried on a cushion," she said, 
"and I sez to mesilf, 'Trubble-de-house shall have 
the largest cushion in Boston wid a picture on it for 
her weddin' ring,' — and here it is!" That arrant 
hypocrite looked neither to the right hand nor the left 
as she opened the package and disclosed its contents. 
She merely clasped her hands and said, "O, Norah! 
You should n't have bought anything so expensive 
for me! I shall never allow this cushion to be used 
for fear of spoiling that clean white satin, but I shall 
keep it always to remember you by, " and Norah went 
back to the kitchen looking as happy as the cat who 
had just eaten the canary. Norah is to be feared — 
bearing gifts. There is a fatal quality in her "sur- 
prises"; it is not long since she presented rae with a 
widow's cap which she had found, — heaven only 
knows where, — because she thought that flimsy bit of 
lace which I had worn over my head out of doors, 
"would do me no good at all." 

The bride is determined to have music at her wed- 
ding, and since there is no orchestra in the region, 
she has decreed that the Lohengrin March is to be 
sung by a quartet of her sisters and their husbands. 

To the rest of us this seems like tempting Provi- 
dence; for we are none of us expert in this form of 

199 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

expression, and I cannot be trusted not to choke and 
grow tearful when that lovely group moves across the 
lawn, I know; and the others are no more to be relied 
upon than I. I am always sentimentally moved at 
weddings, and when this one so reproduces my own, 
what else could possibly be expected ? 

However, we have bravely consented to try, being 
determined that she shall have her will on that day 
if it is possible to accomplish it. Therefore it is, 
that early in the morning, and at intervals during the 
day, and again at sunset, the passer-by might be 
confounded by seeing this sacrificial group assemble 
under the elm trees, sit down upon one of the benches 
brought from the long table, and after various halting 
efforts at the pitch, rend the air with rehearsals. 

The music has so taken possession of us that all 
the preparations move forward to its strains. Norah 
hums it as she beats cake, the Lambs whistle it as 
they march to the woods after wagon-loads of grow- 
ing ferns, and yesterday even Dan was heard carolling 
"tum-tum-ti-tum" to the cows as he milked. The 
melody runs like a golden thread through all the 
fabric of the festival, and the preparations have 
been characterized by a harmony and effectiveness 
which have suggested the idea of having the ordinary 
household tasks accomplished thus to strains of music. 

!200 



MEDITATION ON M A 11 It 1 A G E 

A music box playing Sousa marches in a kitchen pre- 
sided over by a slow domestic, for example, might 
effect a transformation which admonitions could 
never accomplish. 

The Bride-elect has been putting some finishing 
touches to her trousseau herself, and one of her fan- 
cies is that each member of the family must set some 
stitches in her bridal robe. For this reason she pre- 
pared a seam and taking each of the Lambs in turn 
instructed him in the gentle art of needlework. It 
w^as a moving spectacle to see their frantic efforts to 
hold the filmy thing in place and set the stitches be- 
fore it got away from them again, and it is fortunate 
for her that she cares more for sentiment than good 
sewing, for there is plenty of the former and very 
little of the latter in that particular seam. 

The house party now numbers twenty-five, the 
ordinary number having been increased by the acqui- 
sition of the family of the Bridegroom, and the min- 
ister, who is an old friend of the family and here for a 
few days' visit, while we are all together to enjoy it. 

Growing older is not a sad experience when one's 
friends are alongside, sharing in common the effects of 
time. There are already some gray hairs in the min- 
ister's brown locks, and we remember him as a college 
youth! A careful inspection in the mirror reveals a 

201 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

few even upon my head, but people certainly grow 
gray at an earlier age than they used to. When I was 
a child, gray hair was really an indication of age, but 
now it is quite, quite different! It is surprising to 
count the number of prematurely gray people I know, 
— and gratifying to observe that life has not become 
the empty and worn-out thing to them that I once 
thought it must be to people with gray hairs. As a 
matter of fact they seem more interested in living as 
time moves on. 

I can recall the greetings between my parents and 
their old friends when I was a child. "Well, well," 
they would say, "so you are getting a little gray ! But 
gray hairs are becoming to you. You look just as 
you used to, and I feel like a boy still. " And I used 
to sit by, lost in silent wonder at the foolishness of 
people who could be so blind to their own antiquity. 

Why, they were as much as thirty years old, and 
still cherishing the idea that they were young! I 
used even to weep at night, after I had gone to bed, 
over their impending death, and worried a good deal 
about the possibilities of recognizing friends in 
heaven. It was thus that my coming vocation of 
worrier cast its shadow before. 

I have caught a curious expression on the face, of 
the Little Maid once or twice to-day, as we sat under 

202 



MEDITATION ON INI xV R 11 I A G E 

the trees with the minister talking of old times, and I 
suddenly saw ourselves with her eyes, and realized 
that she too was wondering at the blind infatuation 
of the aged who still consider themselves young! It 
is comfortable in reflecting upon the vicissitudes of 
life and the certainty of its passing, to realize liow 
difficult it would be to improve upon the established 
order of things, even though in common with all 
mankind, I sometimes complain of its provisions. 

If life here is but one segment of an infinite circle, 
as I truly believe, how could our journey through it 
be more crowded with blessings, and the difficult 
places more gently bridged ? 

Sorrow and pain there must be until we find out 
the secret of existence and learn to keep step with 
beneficent laws, but the sorrows are gently distributed ; 
the separations do not all come at once; and as the 
Professorinn says, " There is always enough for 
happiness if we will only sec it. " 

To live richly and fully through all the experiences 
which belong to this sphere of existence, even though 
some things are painful to our misunderstanding, is 
a blessing in itself, and I long to be able to say, 
"I am not afraid of anything that life can bring." 

The fate of the Wandering Jew has been mercifully 
spared every human being; he is the most pathetic 

203 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

figure among all myths. We walk along with our 
own generation all the way, and when complete lone- 
liness might overtake us, we too slip through "the 
low green tent whose curtain never outward swings," 
and join our own again on the other side. It is only 
a short vision that makes life look sad and bitter. 

These meetings and partings and solemnities 
might be made sad by a sentimental insistence upon a 
material point of view; but looked at in the light of 
Forever, they slip into their own relative position, 
and the heart recognizes the essential permanence of 
all good and the temporary nature of all else, — if 
in the last analysis there is anything else, — and is 
satisfied. 

The trouble with us is that we do not accept change 
as desirable. We are not willing to " let our half -gods 
go that the gods may arrive." 

I have often wondered what I should do with the 
fairy's three wishes, if they had been offered me. It 
is one of the oldest questions in the world, and the 
essence of fairy tales since the days of ancient Egypt. 

When one has exhausted the entire list of material 
things and recognizes that not all of them put to- 
gether "have the power to make one bootblack 
hapf)y," the infinite worth of the contented mind is 
apparent. Not the contentment which springs from 

204 



MEDITATION ON MA R R I A G E 

thoughtless acceptance of things as they are, hut that 
higher contentment which sees the ultimate benef- 
icence of all things and rests in the realization of it. 

All other blessings come with the vision that sees 
the end of it all and perceives the immense value of 
the means to that end. Even the everlasting effort 
of the human race "to catch up with its dinner" 
serves the highest immaterial ends: courage, fidelity, 
and a thousand fine spiritual qualities are born 
of the struggle. In this view all life becomes full 
of significance, and all w^ork worth while. The 
long perspective casts doubts upon some forms of 
success, and sets small value upon many things 
which look desirable from the more short-sighted 
point of view, and it draws a sharp distinction be- 
tween work, real creative work, and "operations"; 
but those who have the vision, and keep it, are after 
all the favored ones ot earth. 

I suppose this freight train of reflections comes 
from a contemplation of impending changes, and a 
realization that these Arcadian days will soon be 
over, and that we must go back to our tasks. Well — 
while these days last I will live them, and 1 will 
welcome the others when they come! 



203 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE WEDDING 

THEY ' VE gone — and God bless them ! — " over 
the hills and far away, beyond their utmost 
purple rim. " The wedding day is over — such 
a long, beautiful, happy day! This has surely been 
one of the illumined pages of life. 

The day began early, for an afternoon wedding 
demanded that we be up betimes, to do the things 
that could not be done in advance. One of the chief 
duties of the day was the making of a hedge to screen 
the lawn from the highway ; and as this hedge was of 
a temporary character, made by cutting young birch 
trees and sticking them in the ground, it had to be 
done but a short time before the hour of the ceremony, 
which was four o'clock. 

Therefore it was that before breakfast all the men 
and some of the girls and the older children were sent 
to places, previously selected in the pastures, where 
birch trees and golden-rod grew in neighborly prox- 
imity; and while the men cut the birch trees the girls 
gathered great masses of the first yellow flowers of the 
late summer. Dan drove the oxen and loaded the 
trees on the cart as fast as they were cut down: and 

206 



THE WEDDING 

when the wagon was heaped high with the fresh green 
boughs, the men helped the girls to climb to the top 
of the pile, heaped about them the masses of flowers 
which they had gathered, and then walked along be- 
side this glorified hay-cart with its load of living bloom. 

It was a pretty sight for those of us who did not go 
to the field to see their return. The Bridegroom had 
placed the Bride in the centre of the group, with her 
attendants about her, and he himself drove the oxen; 
while the other Lambs, the best man, and the minister 
walked on either side of the wagon, and Dan brought 
up the rear "to gather up any young 'uns that might 
drop off. " We heard the sound of merry voices be- 
fore they rounded the turn of the road and came into 
sight, and even the Forest of Arden never saw a more 
charming sight. 

The sun was still low, and they seemed to mate- 
rialize out of the colors of the morning as they came 
toward us out of the sunrise, throwing long, long 
shadows before. 

Norah and her corps of assistants, secured tor tlic 
occasion, were ready when they returned with such a 
breakfast as might have attended the nuj)ti;ils of Rosa- 
lind; for to-day all our meals have been served out 
of doors, in a green bower, under the apple trees 
separated by a hedge from the rest of the l;iwn. 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

The Bride and Groom were seated together at the 
head of the table ; the rest of the family, from white 
hair to downy tow-heads, were ranged with the guests 
along either side in two long rows; the minister rose 
from his place at the lower end of the table and said 
grace, and then we fell upon the hot rolls and golden 
coffee with appetites sharpened by the excursion to 
the field and exercise in the open air. 

To manage a house party of twenty-five and a wed- 
ding at the same time, with such conditions as prevail 
in a country town, is a difficult matter if the attempt 
is made to treat guests with customary consideration, 
and save them from every exertion. This could not 
be under such circumstances ; and the only solution of 
the diflSculty was for every one to enter into the spirit 
of the event and make duties which might have been 
a tax upon a few, the pleasure of many. 

So when it was time to clear the table, instead of 
waiting for the maids some one automatically struck 
up the wedding march. All joined in, and by a com- 
mon impulse each person seized his plate, and march- 
ing in procession in time to the music, carried it to the 
kitchen, where Norah received us. In a shorter time 
than would be believed possible the breakfast was quite 
cleared away, and we were ready to give our undi- 
vided attention to the more serious matters of the day. 

208 



THE WEDDING 

The Bridegroom disappeared soon after breakfast 
and was gone until noon, searching fields and road- 
sides for fresh sprays of the lovely white virgin's bower 
to twine in his Bride's hair. \Mien she was quite 
ready and waiting in her bridal robes, he gave them 
to her with his own hand. 

At last the minister took his station at the altar 
under the overarching tree; the fathers and mothers 
drew near; the choir, with inward quakings, took its 
appointed position near the altar on the other side; 
and the strains of the wedding march gave the signal 
to the bridal party waiting just out of sight behind 
the old south door. 

The Groom and the best man rose up out of the 
earth in some mysterious fashion, and appeared at 
the minister's elbow; the Groom fixed his eager eyes 
upon the doorway, and then every one waited that 
breathless moment which precedes the advent of the 
Bride. 

At last the door swung open, and the two little 
four-year-olds, with faces of preternatural solemnity, 
appeared. The choir wavered and nearly broke 
down as they drew nearer, — but with laughter, not 
tears; for the little lad, impressed by the unusual na- 
ture of the exercises and by a desire to earn the candy 
with which he had been bribed to the office, was 

i09 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

doing his best to perform his part in a way that should 
be above criticism. 

As the march was rather slow for short legs, and 
he appreciated the necessity for keeping time, he had 
solved the difficulty by raising his leg at right angles 
to his body and holding it there until the tempo per- 
mitted him to drop it and elevate the other in the same 
fashion. His small cousin was doing her best to 
imitate this fantastic step, and the effect of their 
solemn faces combined with this cake walk was over- 
whelming. 

Then came the smiling bridesmaids, no less lovely 
than the Bride, walking like tall lilies along the white 
pathway; and at last, the Bride. The face of the 
Bridegroom was not the only one to light up at the 
sight of her in her misty gown, with the white virgin's 
bower crowning her serene brow, and her hands full 
of its delicate sprays. Her face was aglow with the 
light that never was on sea or land, and as she floated 
along her white pathway, the sunbeams straying 
through the green boughs above her played lovingly 
over her face and figure, and danced in the meshes of 
her hair. Just as she reached the end of her maiden 
journey, the oriole, whose nest hangs from a swaying 
bough high above the altar, suddenly began to sing. 
All through the service he poured forth his madrigal, 

210 



THE W E D D 1 N G 

until the ring was on the bride's finger, and she turned 
to greet the guests who came to give her joy. 

At hist all the guests were gone, and again the 
family assembled under the elm trees to give a 
quiet farewell to the two children setting forth for the 
long journey of life together. Truly, the old trees 
have another group of happy associations added to 
their abundance to-night. 

After they had driven away into the moonlight, 
and the flutter of their white handkerchiefs was no 
longer discernible from the hilltop where we all stood 
to watch their departure, the rest of us sat down 
together about the blossoming altar under the elm 
tree, and discussed the day from every point of view. 

"It is all beautifully over," sighed the eldest at 
last, "and there is n't a thing to regret, not even the 
cake walk of those blessed babes! Even the choir 
acquitted itself creditably; every one looked beautiful ; 
the supper was good; and the local papers can truth- 
fully announce to-morrow — as they always do — 
that 'an enjoyable time was had ' by all present." 

When at last the Little Maid had been cuddled and 
put to bed, my Adam and I crept away together across 
the lawn through the orchard, and up the hill, and 
found a seat upon my rock, standing bare and alone 
upon the hilltop in the moonlight. There we stayed 

211 



A BOOK OF JOYS 

and watched the moon sailing placidly through the 
sky, speaking to each other winged words. "Eight 
years ago to-night at this time, we were just where they 
are, driving over the hills into paradise/' said Adam. 

"And seven years ago to-night we were watching 
the surf in the moonlight and enjoying a second honey- 
moon," said I. And between following the bridal 
pair in imagination, and living over our own happy 
past and present greater joy, the time slipped away so 
fast that it was quite late when I brought our vigil to 
a close by saying to Adam, "Weddings are so very 
nice that I should like to be married as often as 
once in two years. Should n't you.^" 

"My dear!" said Adam, aghast, "don't, for 
Heaven's sake, say such a thing to any one here! 
They will think it 's because you have lived in Chicago 
too long!" 

"But, Adam," I said, "of course you know I mean 
always to you." And what my Adam said to me 
is not to be confided even to my Book of Joys. 

THE END 



212 



OCT 24 IS07 



